LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



CICERO DE SENECTUTE 

(ON OLD AGE). 



TRANSLATED 

WITH 

AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES. 



By ANDREW P. PEABODY. 




LITTLE, 



BOSTON: 
BROWN, AND 
1884. 



COMPANY. 



4 

0.0* 



Copyright, 1884, 
By Andrew P. Peabody. 



SSttt&emtg Press: 
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. 



SYNOPSIS. 



§ 1. Introduction, and dedication. 

2. Old age a part of the order of nature. 

3. Reasons why old age is complained of. 

4. The old age of Quintus Fabius Maximus. 

5. Examples of men who continued their labors in philos- 

ophy and literature to a late old age. — The specific 
charges brought against old age. 

6. It is alleged that old age incapacitates men from the 

management of affairs. The contrary shown to be 
true. 

7. Memory and the mental faculties are not necessarily im- 

paired by age ; but may be preserved in working order 
if kept in exercise. Proved by examples. 

8. Old men need not be disagreeable to the young. Nor 

need they be unemployed and inert. 

9. Failure of bodily strength in old age not to be regretted. 

10. There is no need of full bodily strength, if there be an 

increase of wisdom. 

11. Failure of strength and of mental vigor may be averted 

by a proper regimen of body and mind. 

12. It is complained that old age renders one less susceptible 

of sensual pleasure ; but this is to be regarded as an 
advantage and a benefit. 

13. Moderate and sober conviviality may be still enjoyed by 

those advanced in years. Cato's own example. 



iv 



Synopsis. 



§ 14. Examples of old men who have continued to find delight 
in learning, literary labor, or public service. 

15. The pleasures of agriculture. 

16. Examples of honored and happy old age in rural life. 

Comforts belonging to life on a farm. 

17. The horticulture of Cyrus the younger. 

18. Honorable old age must be provided for by a virtuous 

youth. 

19. Death not to be feared. 

20. Death easier and less repugnant to nature in old age 

than in youth. 
?1. Keasons for believing the soul to be immortal. 

22. The last words of Cyrus the elder, as reported by 

Xenophon. 

23. Immortality anticipated with longing. 



INTRODUCTION. 



After the death of Julius Caesar, and before the 
conflict with Antony, Cicero spent two years in 
retirement, principally at his Tusculan villa. It 
was the most fruitful season of his life, as regards 
philosophy. To this period (B. C. 45 or 44) the 
authorship of the De Senectute is commonly as- 
signed. In his De Divinatione, in enumerating his 
philosophical works, he speaks of this treatise on 
Old Age as " lately thrown in among them," 1 and 

1 Inter jectus est etiam mcper. The chief ground for doubt as 
to the time of its composition is that Cicero seems to speak of 
this book as " thrown in among " the six Books of the De Repub- 
lica f written during his consulate ; while he sometimes gives a 
very broad sense to nuper, as when he writes, nuper, id est paucis 
ante seculis. But between his mention of the De Republica and 
that of the De Senectute he names the Consolatio, which was 
written in B. C. 45, after the death of his daughter. Intel jectus, 
as I suppose, refers, not to the date, but to the brevity of the 
treatise, and by virtue of the etiam applies equally to the Conso- 
latio. ' ' While I have written, earlier or later, the longer works 
that I have named, I have thrown in among them these smaller 
treatises." 



vi 



Introduction. 



as meriting a place in the list. In the De Amicitia, 
dedicated also to Atticus, he says : " In the Cato 
Major, the book on Old Age inscribed to you, I in- 
troduced the aged Cato as leading in the discussion, 
because no person seemed better fitted to speak on 
the subject than one who both had been an old man 
so long, and in old age had still maintained his pre- 
eminence In reading that book of mine, I 

am sometimes so moved that it seems to me as if, 

not I, but Cato were talking I then wrote 

about old age, as an old man to an old man " 1 
Again, Laelius, who is the chief speaker in the 
De Amicitia, is introduced as saying, " Old age is 
not burdensome, as I remember hearing Cato say in 
a conversation with me and Scipio, the year before 
he died." Cicero repeatedly refers to this book in 
his Letters to Atticus. In the stress of appre- 
hension about Antony's plans and movements he 
writes : " I ought to read very often the Cato Majof 
which I sent to you ; for old age is making me more 
bitter. Everything puts me out of temper." At a 
later time he writes, " By saying that Tite, si quid 
ego, 2 delights you more and more, you increase my 
readiness to write." And again, " I rejoice that 
Tite 2 is doing you good." 

In his philosophical and ethical writings, Cicero 
lays no claim to originality ; nor, indeed, did the 

1 Cicero and Atticus were not old men when the De Bepublica 
was written. 

2 The first words of the De Senectute. 



Introduction. 



vii 



Eomans of his age, or even of a much later time, 
regard themes of this kind as properly their own. 
Philosophy was an exotic which it was glory enough 
for them to prize and cultivate. This fame apper- 
tains pre-eminently to Cicero, equally for his com- 
prehensive scholarship, for his keenness of critical 
discernment, and for his generous eclecticism. 
Were it not for his explicit statement, we might 
not learn from his writings to what sect he ac- 
counted himself as belonging. Though he dis- 
claimed the Stoic school, he evidently felt a strong 
gravitation toward it, and we could ask for no bet- 
ter expositor of its doctrines than we find in him. 
Indeed, I can discover no reason for his adherence 
to the New Academy, except the liberty which it 
left to its disciples to doubt its own dogmas, and to 
acknowledge a certain measure of probability in the 
dogmas of other schools. 

In this treatise Cicero doubtless borrowed some- 
thing from Aristo of Chios, a Stoic, to whose work 
on Old Age — no longer extant — he refers, and he 
quotes largely from Xenophon and Plato. At the 
same time, thick-sown tokens of profound convic- 
tion and deep feeling show that the work, if not 
shaped from his experience, was the genuine utter- 
ance of his aspirations. What had been his life 
was forever closed. 1 He was weary and sad. His 
home was desolate, and could never again be other- 

1 Mihi quidem frz&loorai, — " Life is indeed over with me." 
Letters to Atticus, XIV. 21. 



viii 



Introduction. 



wise. His daughter — dearer to him than any- 
other human being had ever been — had recently 
died, and he had still more recently repudiated her 
young step-mother for lack of sympathy with him 
in his sorrow. His only son was giving him great 
solicitude and grief by his waywardness and profli- 
gacy. The republic to which he had consecrated 
his warm devotion and loyal service had ceased to 
be, and gave faint hope of renewed vitality. The 
Senate-house, the popular assembly, and the courts 
were closed for him, and might never be reopened. 
He had courted publicity, and had delighted in 
office, leadership, and influence ; but there was now 
little likelihood that any party that might come 
into power would replace him, where he felt that he 
had a right to be, among the guiding and controlling 
spirits of his time. 

Old age with him is just beginning, and it may 
last long. He is conscious of no failure in bodily 
or mental vigor, — in the capacity of work or of 
enjoyment. Yet in all that had contributed to his 
fame and his happiness, he has passed the culmi- 
nating point; he is on the westward declivity of 
his life-way; decrease and decline are inevitable. 
But shall he succumb to the inevitable in sullen 
despondency, or shall he explore its resources for a 
contented and enjoyable life, and put them to the 
test of experience ? He chooses the latter alterna- 
tive, and it is not as the mere rehearsal of what he 
has read in Greek books, but with the glow of fresh 



Introduction. 



ix 



discovery, and in the spirit of one who is mapping 
out the ground of which he means to take posses- 
sion, that he describes what old age has been, what 
it may still be, and what he yearns to make it for 
himself. He grows strong, cheerful, and hopeful as 
he writes, and in coming times of distress and peril 
he unrolls this little volume for his own support and 
consolation. 

In imitation of the Platonic pattern, followed by 
him in several previous treatises, he adopts the form 
of dialogue ; but after the interchange of a few sen- 
tences the dialogue becomes monologue, and Cato 
talks on without interruption to the end. Cato is 
chosen as the principal interlocutor, because he was 
the typical old man of Eoman history, having prob- 
ably retained his foremost place in the public eye, 
and his oratorical power in the Senate and at the 
bar, to a later age than any other person on record. 
In his part in this dialogue there is a singular com- 
mingling of fact, truth, and myth. The actual 
details of his life are gracefully interwreathed with 
the discussion, and the incidental notices of his 
elders and coevals are precisely such as might have 
fallen from his lips had he been of a more genial 
temperament. There is dramatic truth, too, in 
Cato's senile way of talking, with the garrulity, 
repetition, prolixity, and occasional confusion of 
names, to which old men are liable, and in which 
Cicero merges his own precision and accuracy in 
the character which for the time he assumes. But 



X 



Introduction. 



as regards the kindly, the aesthetic, and the spiritual 
traits that make this work so very charming, its 
Cato is a mythical creation, utterly unlike the 
coarse, hard, stern, crabbed ex-Censor, who was 
guiltless equally of taste and of sentiment. 

Cicero's reasoning in this treatise is based, in 
great part, on what old age may be, rather than on 
what it generally is ; and yet I cannot but believe 
that, were its cautions heeded, its advice followed, 
and its spirit inbreathed, the number of those who 
find in the weight of many years no heavy burden 
would be largely multiplied. Yet there would re- 
main not a few cases of hopeless inanity and help- 
less suffering. We are here told, and with truth, 
that it is often the follies and sins of early life that 
embitter the declining years ; yet infirmity some- 
times overtakes lives that have been blameless and 
exemplary, nor does the strictest hygienic regimen 
always arrest the failure of body and of mind. 
Undoubtedly the worst thing that an old man can 
do is to cease from labor and to cast off responsi- 
bility. The powers suffered to repose lapse from 
inaction into inability ; while they will in most 
cases continue to meet the drafts made upon 
them, if those drafts recur with wonted frequency 
and urgency. Yet there is always danger that, as 
in the case of the Archbishop in Gil Bias, the old 
man who insists on doing his full tale of work will 
be mistaken in thinking that undiminished quantity 
implies unimpaired quality. 



Introduction. 



xi 



But apart from the continued life-work, Cicero 
indicates resources of old age which are as genuine 
and as precious now as they were two thousand 
years ago. While the zest of highly seasoned 
convivial enjoyment, especially of such as abuts 
upon the disputed border-ground between sobriety 
and excess, is exhaled, there is fully as much to be 
enjoyed in society as in earlier years. Perhaps 
even more ; for as friends grow few, those that re- 
main are all the dearer, and in the company of 
those in early or middle life, the old man finds 
himself an eager learner as to the rapidly fleet- 
ing present, and imagines himself a not unwelcome 
teacher as to what deserves commemoration in the 
obsolescent and outgrown past. The tokens of def- 
erence and honor uniformly rendered in society to 
old age that has not forfeited its title to respect are 
a source of pleasure. They are, indeed, in great 
part, conventional; but for this very reason they 
only mean and express the more, inasmuch as they 
betoken, not individual feeling, but the general sen- 
timent of regard and reverence for those whose long 
life-record is unblotted. 

Eural pursuits and recreations, also, as Cicero says, 
are of incalculable worth to the aged. The love of 
nature increases with added years. In the outward 
universe there is an infinity of beauty and of love- 
liness. The Creator englobes his own attributes in 
all his works. What we get from them is finite, 
solely because the taste and feeling that apprehend 



xii 



Introduction. 



them are finite. But our receptivity grows with 
the growth of character, and our revenue of delight 
from field and garden, orchard and forest, brook and 
stream, sunset clouds and star-gemmed skies, is in 
full proportion to our receptivity, and is never so 
rich and so gladdening as in the later years of life. 
Cicero evidently felt this. There is hardly any- 
thing in all his works so beautiful as the sections 
of this treatise in which he describes the growth of 
the corn and the vine, and the simple joys of a 
country home. Indeed, this is almost a unique 
passage. The literature of nature is, for the most 
part, of modern birth. The classic writers give 
now and then, in a single phrase or sentence, a 
vivid word-picture of scenery or of some phenome- 
non in the outward world; but they seldom dwell 
on such themes. Even pastoral poetry sings of the 
flocks and their keepers, rather than of their mate- 
rial surroundings. But here we have proof that 
Cicero had grown into an appreciation of the wealth 
of beauty lying around his villa, far beyond what 
would have been possible for him when he sought 
its quiet as a refuge from the turmoil and conflicts 
of his more active days. 

Cicero is right, too, in regarding the presence 
of old men in the state as essential to its safety 
and well-being. True, their office is, for the most 
part, that of brakemen; but on a roadway never 
smooth, and passing over frequent declivities, this 
duty often demands more strength and skill than are 



Introdicction. 



xiii 



required to light the fires and run the engine. It 
is only by a conservatism both wise and firm that 
progress can be made continuous and reform per- 
manent. Nor is there any imminent probability 
that old age will furnish a larger array of conserva- 
tive force than the world needs. If in the advance- 
ment of physical and moral hygiene the time should 
come when the hoary head shall be in due season 
the normal crown of every man, and, according 
to the Hebrew hyperbole, "the child shall die an 
hundred years 0101," society will have attained a 
summit-level at which there will be need neither of 
engineers nor of brakemen. 

Meanwhile, it is well for mankind that old men 
are so few. Were they more numerous, and at the 
same time worthy to retain the confidence of their 
fellow-men, the young would lack the exercise and 
discipline of their powers which alone could fit 
them for an honorable and useful old age. Death 
oils all the wheels of life. It is always throwing 
heavy responsibility on those who do not seek it, 
but accept it as a necessity, and gird themselves to 
bear it faithfully and nobly. As in a well-trained 
army the reserved forces rush in to fill the places of 
the fallen, so in the battle of life the ranks of the 
dying are recruited by those who are biding their 
time. Death is the ripener of manly force and 
efficient virtue, which would droop under the dense 
shadow of thoroughly matured and still active ser- 
vice, but are stimulated into full vitality and work- 



xiv 



Introduction. 



ing power as the spaces around them are made void. 
The very bereavements which are most dreaded and 
deplored as utterly irreparable, are the most certain 
to be repaired, and often by those who before neither 
knew themselves nor were known to be capable of 
such momentous charge and duty. Elijah wears his 
mantle till he goes to heaven, and there is no other 
on earth like it ; but when he ascends he drops the 
mantle, and his spirit enters into the man who picks 
it up. Death is, indeed, looked upon as a calamity 
by many whose faith should have taught them better. 
The death which closes an undevout and worthless 
life may well be dreaded ; yet even in such a case 
continued life is perhaps to be still more dreaded. 
But in the order designed by Infinite Wisdom, and 
destined to progressive and ultimate establishment, 
death bears a supremely beneficent part, and is an 
event only to be welcomed in its appointed season 
by him who has brought his own life into conform- 
ity with the Divine order. 

But death can be regarded with complacency 
only when it is looked upon, — as Cicero represents 
it, — as not an end, but a way, — as not a ceasing to 
live, but a beginning to live. The jubilant strains 
in which the assurance of immortality is here 
voiced are hardly surpassed in grandeur by St. 
Paul's words of triumph when the crown of mar- 
tyrdom hung close within his reach. Yet there is 
a difference. Cicero's faith transcended, and in 
great part created, his reasons for it, and it failed 



Introduction. 



xv 



him in the very crises in which he most needed it ; 
St. Paul " knew in whom he had believed," and his 
faith was sightlike when death seemed nearest. It 
is of no little worth to us that Socrates and Plato, 
Cicero and Plutarch, felt so intensely the pulse-beat 
of the undying life within. Of inestimably greater 
evidential value is it, that he whose peerless beauty 
of holiness made his humanity divine ever spoke 
of the eternal life as the one reality of human being. 
But there are for us emergencies of sore need and 
of heavy trial, times when we go down to the mar- 
gin of the death-river with those dear to us as our 
own souls, critical moments when we ourselves are 
passing under the shadow of death ; and at such 
seasons we can rest on no reasoning, we can be sat- 
isfied with no unbuttressed testimony ; but our faith 
can repose in undoubting security on the broken 
sepulchre, on the risen Saviour, on those words 
spoken for all time, " Because I live, ye shall live 
also." 



xvi 



Introduction. 



ATTICUS. 

Titus Pomponius, as he was originally named, on 
his adoption by his uncle prefixed that uncle's name, 
Quintus Caecilius, to his own, and subsequently, in 
consequence of his long residence in Athens, as- 
sumed, or received and accepted, the surname of 
Atticus, by which he is known in history. He was 
born in Eome, 109 B. C, and was Cicero's senior 
by three years. He belonged to an old Equestrian 
family, not eminent, but of high respectability. 
His father was a man of culture and of literary 
tastes, and gave his son a liberal education. The 
civil war between the factions of Marius and Sulla 
broke out in the son's early manhood, and he hardly 
escaped being a victim of Sulla's proscription. He 
determined to insure safety by voluntary exile, and, 
his father being dead, he betook himself with the 
movable portion of his ample patrimony to Athens, 
where he lived for twenty years. 

He called himself an Epicurean, and, though not 
deeply versed in philosophy, he probably realized 
more nearly than any man whose history we know 
the ethical ideal of Epicurus himself. Supremely, 
but judiciously selfish; covetous of pleasure, yet 
with an aesthetic sense which found pleasure only 
in things decent, tasteful, and becoming ; a persist- 



Introduction. 



xvii 



ent and loyal friend, so far as friendship demanded 
neither conflict nor sacrifice ; sedulously avoiding 
pain, annoyance, and trouble; plucking roses all 
along his life way so carefully as never to incur a 
thorn-prick, — he must have derived as large a 
revenue of enjoyment from his seventy-seven years 
in this world as ever accrued to any man whose 
aims were all self-centred and self-terminated. 

He was fond of money, frugal while elegant in 
his mode of living, with no vices so far as we know, 
certainly with no costly vices. He was married 
only late in life, and had but one child to provide 
for. His uncle — a usurer of ignoble reputation — 
left him an estate five times as large as that re- 
ceived from his father. This he increased by the 
remunerative purchase of extensive tracts of land in 
Epeirus and elsewhere, by loans to individuals, cor- 
porations, and cities, by traffic in slaves and gladi- 
ators, and, as a publisher, by multiplying, for high 
prices, through the numerous copyists whom he 
owned, transcripts of Cicero's works and of other 
writings of friends who sought to reach the public 
by his agency. At the same time, he made a judi- 
cious investment of charities far within his income, 
in loans without interest and public benefactions to 
the city of Athens, in loans and gifts to those within 
the circle of his intimacy, and in gratuities to per- 
sons straitened or suffering through stress of political 
convulsions and perils. 

He belonged, by sympathy and in his private 
b 



xviii 



Introduction. 



correspondence, to the Marian, and then to the 
Pompeian party, and had a strong antipathy to the 
course and policy of Julius Caesar, his race and 
kind; but he publicly identified himself with no 
party, refrained from political activity of every sort, 
and refused contributions in aid even of movements 
that had his full approval and his best wishes. He 
was always ready to relieve the distressed members 
of both and of all parties. He held friendly rela- 
tions equally with Julius Caesar and Pompey, 
Cassius and Antony, Brutus and Caesar Augustus. 

He had the most winning and attractive man- 
ners, a voice of rare sweetness and melody, and con- 
versational powers unsurpassed, if equalled, by any 
man of his time. He was hospitable, yet without 
extravagance or ostentation, and his entertainments, 
first in Athens, and then in Eome, were remark- 
able as reunions of all that there was of learning, 
genius, wit, and grace. He loved to maintain peace- 
ful and harmonious relations among his wonted 
guests, and was persevering in his endeavors to 
reconcile differences, soothe jealousies, and prevent 
rivals from becoming enemies. It was wholly due 
to their common friend and host that Cicero and 
Hortensius, as alike candidates for the palm of elo- 
quence, preserved at least the show of friendship. 

Atticus was also a man of large and varied 
learning, was equally versed in Greek and in Eo- 
man literature, and used either tongue in speech 
and in writing as if he had never known any other. 



Introduction. 



xix 



He was a thorough grammarian and a careful critic. 
His friends were in the habit of sending their works 
to him for a last revision, and it is by no means 
improbable that some of the delicate touches of 
Cicero's rhetoric may be due to his consummate 
taste and skill. He was himself an author, and 
wrote among other things an epitome of Eoman 
history from the earliest time to his own. He was 
a ready and fluent letter-writer. But none of his 
writings are extant, except such few scraps of his 
epistles as are preserved in Cicero's answers to 
them. 

The friendship between Cicero and Atticus began 
in their early boyhood. When Cicero first went to 
Athens — shortly after his defence of Eoscius, and 
not improbably to escape the vengeance of Sulla — 
he found Atticus already established there, and for 
six months they, with Cicero's brother Quintus, who 
married the sister of Atticus, were constantly asso- 
ciated in study and in recreation. From that time 
Atticus was Cicero's closest and dearest friend, en- 
tering with the most vivid interest into all his plans 
and pursuits, lending him money, advising him in 
business, taking care of his property during his 
absences, and rendering counsel and aid in connec- 
tion with the successive divorces of Terentia and 
Publilia. The correspondence between them now 
extant commenced only three years before Atticus 
returned to Eome, though it is hardly possible that 
they should not have exchanged letters previously. 



XX 



Introduction. 



On Cicero's side the epistles are of the most famil- 
iar character, giving us a minute narrative of inci- 
dent, occupation, thought, and sentiment, day by 
day, and furnishing more ample and more authentic 
materials for his biography than are derived from 
all other sources. They include equally such refer- 
ences to the details of the life of Atticus, and to 
all his peculiarities of habit, opinion, and taste, that 
we feel hardly less intimately acquainted with him 
than with his illustrious correspondent. He be- 
came to Cicero as another self, an admirer of his 
genius, a participant in all his ambitions, and in 
many matters of practical life by far the wiser of 
the two. That he knew the worth, prized the priv- 
ilege, and undoubtedly anticipated the enduring 
fame of such a friendship, is the best title that re- 
mains on record to the place which he would have 
claimed in the list of genuine philosophers. 



Introduction* 



xxi 



CATO. 

Marcus Porcius Cato Censorius was born at 
Tusculam in Latium, probably B. C. 234, and died 
at the age of at least eighty -five years. Livy and 
Plutarch both say that he passed his ninetieth year. 
He was of plebeian birth, and the founder of his 
own illustrious family. Porcius was the family 
name, and Cato was a name either given to him in 
childhood with foresight of his shrewdness and prac- 
tical wisdom, or else bestowed on him and accepted 
by him after his peculiar traits of character were 
well known and distinctly recognized. It denotes 
wisdom of an entirely terrestrial, and even feline 
type, and is on the whole more appropriate to him 
than the surname Sapiens, which attached itself to 
him in his later years. He had great virtues, but 
defects as great. In not one of the beatitudes in the 
Sermon on the Mount could he have claimed a part, 
nor would he have deigned to claim it, unless, in 
the almost numberless suits at law in which he was 
his own advocate, he might have regarded himself 
as " persecuted for righteousness' sake." He was 
rigidly truthful, sternly and ferociously upright, in- 
tensely courageous, and devotedly patriotic, — kind, 
too, to his wives and children. But he was mean 
and miserly, an exacting and tyrannical master, an 



xxii 



Introduction. 



implacable enemy, and his lower appetites were not 
governed by principle, but kept in check only so far 
as prudence required. He probably seemed a better 
man in Cicero's time than in his own, and this for 
two reasons ; namely, that his peculiar virtues had 
almost died out of the Eoman commonwealth, and 
that, when a man transmits to posterity any valid 
title to fame, time enhances his merits and extenu- 
ates his faults, so that the generation which " builds 
the sepulchres of the prophets " always idealizes the 
busts that surmount them. 

As regards versatility of endowment, number and 
diversity of official trusts, ability and faithfulness as 
a servant of the public, and influence — unspent by 
death — over the Senate and the people, Cato had 
no equal in the history of Korne. The impress of 
his life and character on the ages that looked back 
on his career from the interval of centuries, may 
best be seen from Livy's panegyric, of which we 
give a literal translation. After enumerating the 
long list of competitors for the office of Censor, he 
says : — 

" Marcus Porcius [Cato] stood in the canvass far be- 
fore all the patricians and plebeians of the most noble 
families. In this man there was so great force of mind 
and genius, that, whatever might have been his position 
by birth, he seemed destined to be the artificer of his 
own fortune. He lacked no skill in the management 
of either private or public interests. He was equally 
versed in the affairs of the city and of the country. 



Introduction. 



xxiii 



Some have attained the highest honors by virtue of 
legal science, some by eloquence, some by military 
fame ; he had a genius so capable of excelling in all, 
that whatever he had in hand you would say that he 
was expressly born for it. In war he was the bravest 
of soldiers, renowned in many signal conflicts ; after he 
rose to high honors, a consummate general ; in peace, if 
you asked legal advice, the wisest of counsellors ; if you 
had a cause to be argued, the most eloquent of advo- 
cates. Nor was Jie one whose fame as an orator, flour- 
ishing while he lived, left no memorial of itself behind 
him. His eloquence still lives, consecrated by writings 
of every description. There are extant many of his 
speeches for himself, and for others, and against others ; 
for he harassed his opponents equally by accusing them 
and by pleading his own cause. An excessive number 
of enmities were cherished against him, and cherished 
by him ; nor was it easy to say whether the nobles were 
the more earnest to put him down, or he to annoy them. 
He was, undoubtedly, of a harsh temper, and of a bit- 
ter and an inordinately free tongue, but of a soul 
unconquered by sensual appetites, of rigid integrity, a 
despiser of adulation and of bribes. In frugal living, 
in endurance of labor and of danger, he was of an iron 
constitution of body and mind; nor could old age, 
which enfeebles all things, break him. In his eighty- 
sixth year he had a case in court, pleaded his own cause, 
and continued to write, and in his ninetieth year he 
brought Servius Galba to trial before the people." 

Cato inherited a small farm in the Sabine terri- 
tory, where he spent his boyhood and such portions 



xxiv 



Introduction. 



of his subsequent life as were free from public ser- 
vice. Here he lived with the utmost simplicity, 
worked on his farm, and associated on familiar 
terms with his rustic neighbors. At the age of 
seventeen he made his first campaign as a soldier, 
and three years later reached the dignity of a mili- 
tary Tribune under Fabius Maximus, whose friend- 
ship he enjoyed. B. C. 205, he went to Sicily as 
military Quaestor under the elder Africanus. In due 
time he became Aedile, and the next year Praetor, 
having Sardinia for his province, with a considera- 
ble military command. In this office he renounced 
the wonted pomp of his predecessors, walked on his 
circuits, cut down to the lowest point all public 
expenses, waged war against usury, and visited 
usurers with condign punishment. Chosen Consul 
B. C. 195, he sustained during his term of office the 
only signal defeat in his whole career. Twenty 
years previously, in the stress of the Punic war, a 
severe sumptuary law had been passed, limiting the 
amount of gold which women might possess, for- 
bidding them to wear many-colored garments, and 
prohibiting their use of carriages for short distances 
in the city. The women absolutely mobbed the 
Senators, imploring the repeal of restrictions no 
longer needed. Cato opposed them to the last; 
but they by importunity won the day, and cele- 
brated their victory by a procession, in which they 
made ample show of the late-proscribed finery. As 
soon as this domestic war was over, Cato set sail for 



Introduction. 



XXV 



his allotted province, Hither Spain (Rispania Cite- 
rior). Here there were rebel and recalcitrant tribes 
to be reduced to submission, and Cato in the con- 
duct of this campaign displayed at once the highest 
military ability and the most wanton and savage 
cruelty. He was rewarded with a triumph; but 
returned to encounter the enmity of the elder 
Scipio African us, toward whom he had previously 
stood in unfriendly relations. He successfully de- 
fended himself against the charges urged against 
him, which seem to have related, in part at least, 
to the pecuniary administration of his province, in 
which Cato was able, by producing his accounts, to 
show himself, as in these matters he always was, 
not only above suspicion, but minutely exact, and as 
parsimonious in public office as he was in his own 
private affairs. He subsequently served under 
Glabrio, probably as Legatus, or lieutenant-general, 
in the war with Antiochus the Great, and the bat- 
tle of Thermopylae, which crippled Antiochus, was 
brought to a successful issue confessedly by the 
prowess, energy, and strategic skill of Cato. 

B. C. 184, Cato was chosen Censor, and applied 
himself at once with characteristic vigor and acri- 
mony to the duties of his office. He made the 
most stringent provisions against luxury. He put 
the aqueducts, sewers, and other public works in 
order, and arrested all the modes in which public 
property had been perverted to private uses, such 
as the drawing off of water from the reservoirs for 



xxvi 



Introduction. 



the special supply of houses and gardens. He 
brought farmers of the revenue and contractors of 
every class to strict account, and regulated all con- 
tracts by his own perhaps too low estimate of the 
actual worth of the work done or the sertice ren- 
dered. He degraded from the Senate and from 
their Equestrian privileges a very considerable num- 
ber of men of previously high standing, most of them 
for grave and sufficient reasons, — some, it must be 
confessed, on very frivolous pretexts. He laid up 
by his censorial career a stock of enmities which 
lasted him for the rest of his life, during w 7 hich he 
held no public office, but appeared constantly in the 
courts, in the Senate, and before the people, retain- 
ing to the last his clearness and vigor of intellect, 
and much of his oratorical power. He was during 
his lifetime prosecuted before the tribunals forty- 
four times, and failed of successful defence but 
once. He was still oftener a public accuser, and 
generally procured the conviction of the defendant. 
In the case of Servius Galba, recorded by Livy as 
his last, he lost the cause, though a righteous one, 
by the wonted resource of an appeal by weeping 
children to the pity of the judges. 

Cato, though not a profligate or a sot, was not 
consistently pure nor uniformly temperate. He 
dealt with his slaves as with cattle, treating them 
as merchantable chattels, punishing them with 
wanton severity, and sometimes condemning them 
to death for trivial offences. His whole life must 



Introduction. 



xxvii 



have been coarse, in many aspects even brutal, and 
the aesthetic faculty seems to have been entirely 
wanting ill him. 

Yet his literary culture must have been of a high 
order. He learned Greek in his old age, after de- 
spising the language and its writers during the 
whole of his earlier life. He was a friend and 
patron of the poet Ennius, and brought him to 
Eome, though manifestly without any generous 
provision for his subsistence ; for Ennius led in 
Eome as poor and straitened a life as he could 
have left in Sardinia, where Cato found him. Of 
Cato's orations, letters, and great historical work, we 
have only fragments extant. His De Be Eustica 
exists, probably unchanged in substance, though 
modernized in form. It is not so much a treatise 
as a miscellaneous compend of materials relating to 
agriculture and rural affairs, and it undoubtedly 
presents the most genuine picture that has been 
preserved to our time of rustic life in Italy two 
thousand years ago. 



xxviii 



Introduction. 



LAELIUS. 

Caius Laelius Sapiens, of a distinguished patri- 
cian family, was born in Eome, B. C. 186. His 
surname was given to him for his prudence in re- 
tracting certain agrarian measures in which he 
would have shared with the Gracchi the intensest 
enmity of the whole patrician body. He was va- 
cillating in his political opinions and proclivities, 
feeling strong sympathy with the popular cause, yet 
unwilling to forfeit the friendship and esteem of his 
own native caste. Though he was not a great man, 
he filled reputably several high public trusts, both 
civil and military, and was regarded as the most 
learned and acute of jurists in augural law, which 
was largely made up of authority and precedent, 
and abounded in intricacies and subtilties, while 
yet it constantly had grave complications with the 
most important affairs of state. 

He was a man of large and varied erudition, was 
well versed in philosophy, and as a pupil of Dioge- 
nes of Babylon, and then of Panaetius, was among 
the earliest Eoman disciples of the Stoic school. 

His social qualities won for him many and warm 
friends. He had an even temper, genial manners, 
fine conversational powers, ready wit and affluent 
humor. In the De Senectute he is fitly associated 



Introduction. 



xxix 



with the younger Scipio Africanus, with whom he 
lived in the closest intimacy, as his father had with 
the elder Africanus. Thoroughly amiable in his 
domestic relations, he seems to have almost antici- 
pated the home life of modern Christendom, and 
we have accounts of games not unlike our blind- 
man's-buff, in which he and Scipio dropped all 
dignity and became boys again. Many of his face- 
tious sayings lingered long in the popular memory, 
and some still survive. The best of them is his 
reply to an impertinent man, who reproached him 
with not being worthy of his ancestors, — " But you 
are worthy of yours." 

Of his writings — chiefly orations — nothing re- 
mains except a few titles. He was regarded as 
singularly smooth and elegant in his style ; but the 
Latin tongue was by no means in his day the subtle 
and flexible organ of thought which Cicero both 
found and made it, and some of the later gramma- 
rians resorted to Laelius for specimens of archaic 
words and idioms. 



XXX 



Introduction. 



SCIPIO. 

Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus Africanus 
Minor was a son of Lucius Aemilius Paullus, and 
was adopted by his cousin, Publius Cornelius Scipio 
Africanus, the son of the elder Africanus. He was 
born in the same year with Laelius. He has his 
place in history as the most able and successful 
military commander of his age. He first gained 
celebrity in Spain as military Tribune under Lucius 
Lucullus, whom he eclipsed in fame, equally as to 
courage, integrity, and humanity. At the beginning 
of the third Punic war he still served as Tribune ; 
but by his valor and skill he so won the suffrages 
of the army and the confidence of the people, that 
he was made Consul before the legal age, and was 
thus placed in supreme command. The war, under 
his energetic conduct, issued in the capture and 
destruction of Carthage. He was subsequently 
chosen Consul a second time, with a view to his 
service as commander in Spain, where the war had 
been prolonged for many years, and with repeated 
disasters for the Eoman army. Scipio laid siege to 
Numantia, and, after the most obstinate resistance 
on the part of the Spaniards, took the city, levelled 
it with the ground, reserved fifty of its inhabitants 
to grace his triumph, and sold the rest of them as 
slaves. 



Introduction. xxxi 

He was Censor for a year in the interval between 
his two consulships, and in that office he chose Cato 
for his model, employed the utmost severity in the 
repression of extravagance, luxury, and licentious- 
ness, and made some strong and bitter enemies. 
He was always and consistently an aristocrat, and 
an opposer of all agrarian measures, and of the self- 
constituted leaders of the popular or plebeian party ; 
and as his death occurred suddenly and mysteri- 
ously, it was supposed that he had been murdered 
by some one of his political antagonists, probably 
by Papirius Carbo, who had been unsparing in 
denunciations and invectives against him as the 
enemy of the Eoman people. 

Scipio was one of the most learned and accom- 
plished men of his age, a friend of Polybius and 
Panaetius, a patron of the poets Lucilius and Ter- 
ence, and, it was said, — probably on no sufficient 
evidence, — a collaborator with Terence, or at least 
a reviser of some of his comedies. 



In my translation I have uniformly followed the 
text of Otto. Few of the various readings are of 
any importance; and where there is a difference 
worthy of notice, I find that, so far as I can remem- 
ber without an exception, Lahmeyer and Sommer- 
brodt, whose editions I have constantly consulted, 
coincide with Otto. 



CICERO DE SENECTUTE. 



I. " Titus, if I can lift or ease the care 

That ceaseless burns and rankles in your breast, 
What guerdon shall be mine 1 " 

For I may be permitted to address you, Atticus, in 
the very verses in which Flamininus 1 is addressed 

by 

" That man so rich in probity, not gold," 9 - 

1 Titus Quintius Flamininus, who was a coeval of Ennius. His 
was an eminently successful career. The " care" pressing so con- 
stantly upon him may have been that of the war with Philip of 
Macedonia, in which he showed eminent ability as a commander 
and a strategist, and which he closed by a peace of which he 
seems to have dictated the terms. But it more probably may 
have been a strong and lasting sense of the disgrace brought upon 
the family by the flagitious conduct of his brother Lucius Quin- 
tius Flamininus, who was ignominiously expelled from the Senate, 
by Cato the Elder, during his Censorship. 

2 Ennius, who spent the last years of his life in Rome, and 
maintained himself as a preceptor to youths of patrician families. 
He was born in a small village near Brundusium, and was in- 
duced to come to Rome by Cato the Elder. He was held in the 
highest esteem, affection, and reverence by the best men of his 
time. 

1 



2 



Cicero de Senectute. 



although I feel assured that it is by no means true, 
as of Flamininus, that 

" You, Titus, pass but anxious nights and days n ; 

for I know the moderation and evenness of your 
temperament, and am aware that you brought away 
from Athens, not only your surname, but also liberal 
culture and practical wisdom. Yet I am inclined 
to think that you are sometimes seriously disturbed 
by the same things 1 that weigh heavily on my 
mind, under which such comfort as may be had is 
a matter of graver moment, and must be deferred 
to some other time. But my present purpose is 
to write to you something about Old Age. For 
I desire that you and I may be lightened of this 
burden, which we have in common, of old age 
already pressing upon us or drawing close at hand, 2 
though I am certain that you indeed bear and will 
bear it, as all things else, serenely and wisely. But 
when it came into my mind to write something 
about old age, you occurred to me as worthy to 
receive in this essay an offering of which you and 
I may in common enjoy the benefit. Indeed, the 
composition of this book has been so pleasant to 
me, that it has not only brushed away all the vexa- 
tions of old age, but has made it even easy and 
agreeable. In truth, sufficiently worthy praise can 

1 By the condition of public affairs, as to which Atticus pro- 
fessed an indifference which he can hardly have felt. 

2 Atticus was three years older than Cicero, who was in his 
sixty-second year when this treatise was written. 



Cicero de Senectute. 



3 



never be given to philosophy, whose votaries can 
pass every period of life without annoyance. But 
on other philosophical subjects I have said much, 
and hope to revert to them often ; this book, on Old 
Age, I send specially to you. I put what I have to 
say, not, like Aristo of Chios, 1 into the mouth of 
Tithonus 2 (for a fictitious character cannot speak 
with authority), but into that of the aged Cato, that 
the discourse may gain authority from his name. 
With him I introduce Laelius and Scipio, admiring 
the ease with which he bears old age, and I give 
his answers to them. If I make him talk more 
learnedly than he was wont to do in his books, you 
may ascribe it to the Greek literature and philoso- 
phy, of which, as is well known, he was very stu- 
dious in his latter years. But what need is there 
of a longer preface ? For, as it were in Cato's own 
words, you shall forthwith hear all that I think and 
feel about old age. 

1 Latin, Chins. Aristo, or Ariston, of Chios, was a Stoic 
philosopher, and an immediate disciple of Zeno. Some authori- 
ties read Ce us> and there was an Ariston, a Peripatetic philoso- 
pher, of Ceos, of whose many writings only a few fragments have 
been preserved. The two are often confounded, even by ancient 
writers, and either of them may have written the treatise or 
dialogue on old age here referred to. 

2 The son of Eos, or Aurora, who obtained for him, from Zeus, 
the gift of immortality, but forgot to stipulate for that of eternal 
youth. He shrivelled in old age by slow degrees ; his voice be- 
came a mere chirp, and he at length dwindled into a cricket. Can 
this myth mean that the son of the morning, the early riser, has 
the promise of long life ? 



4 



Cicero de Senectute. 



II. Scipio. I often express, Marcus Cato, in con- 
versation with Caius Laelius, now present, my admi- 
ration of your surpassing and consummate wisdom, 
in other matters indeed, but especially because I 
have never perceived that old age was grievous to 
you, though to old men in general it is so hateful 
that they account themselves as bearing a burden 
heavier than Aetna. 1 

Cato. You seem, Scipio and Laelius, to admire 
what has been to me by no means difficult. For 
those who have in themselves no resources for a 
good and happy life, every period of life is burden- 
some ; but to those who seek all goods from within, 
nothing which comes in the course of nature can 
seem evil. Under this head a place especially be- 
longs to old age, which all desire to attain, yet find 
fault with it when they have reached it. Such is 
the inconsistency and perverseness of human folly. 
They say that age creeps upon them faster than 
they had thought possible. In the first place, who 
forced them to make this false estimate ? In the 
next place, how could old age be less burdensome 
to them if it came on their eight-hundredth year 
than it is in their eightieth ? For the time past, 
however long, when it had elapsed, could furnish no 
comfort to soothe a foolish old age. If, then, you 
are wont to admire my wisdom, — would that it 

1 Briareus, Enceladus, and Typhoeus, giants, who made war 
against the gods, were said, in Grecian fable, to have been buried 
alive by Zeus under Mount Aetna. See the Aeneid, iii. 578. 



Cicero de Senechite. 



5 



were worthy of your appreciation and of my own 
surname, 1 — I am wise in this respect, that I fol- 
low and obey Nature, the surest guide, as if she 
were a god, and it is utterly improbable that she 
has well arranged the other parts of life, and yet, 
like an unskilled poet, slighted the last act of the 
drama. There must, however, of necessity, be some 
end, and, as in the case of berries on the trees and 
the fruits of the earth, there must be that which in 
its season of full ripeness is, so to speak, ready to 
wither and fall, — which a wise man ought to bear 
patiently. For to rebel against Nature is but to 
repeat the war of the Giants with the Gods. 

Laelius. Indeed, Cato, you will have rendered 
us a most welcome service — I will answer for 
Scipio — if, since we hope, indeed wish, at all 
events, to become old, we can learn of you, far in 
advance, in what ways we can most easily bear the 
encroachment of age. 

Cato. I will render this service, Laelius, if, as 
you say, it will be agreeable to both of you. 

Laelius. We do indeed desire, Cato, unless it 
will give you too much trouble, since you have 

1 The reference may here be to Cato, which name he seems to 
have been the first to bear, and which may have been given him 
in childhood for the promise of the qualities fully developed in 
later years. The term denotes shrewdness and cunning, rather 
than wisdom, — in fine, the feline attributes which have given 
name both in the Latin (catus) and in the English to the cat. 
Reference may, however, be had to Sapiens, — a surname cur- 
rently given to Cato in his later years. 



6 



Cicero de Seneetute. 



taken a long journey which we must begin, that you 
will show us the goal which you have reached. 

III. Cato. I will do so, Laelius, to the best of 
my ability. I have, indeed, often been a listener 
to complaints of men of my own age, — for, as the 
old proverb says, " Like best mates with like," 1 — 
such complaints, for instance, as those which Caius 
^Salinator and Spurius Albinus, men of consular 
dignity, nearly my coevals, used to make, because 
they were deprived of the sensual gratifications 
without which life appeared to them a blank, and 
because they were neglected by those by whom 
they were wont to be held in reverence. They 
seemed to me to lay the blame where it did not 
belong. For if old age had been at fault, I and all 
other persons of advanced years would have the 
same experience; while I have known many old 
men who have made no complaint, who did not 
regret their release from the slavery of sensual 
appetite, and were not despised by their fellow- 
citizens. But all complaints of this kind are 
chargeable to character, not to age. Old men 
who are moderate in their desires, and are neither 
testy nor morose, find old age endurable ; but rude- 
ness and incivility are offensive at any age. 

Laelius. You are right, Cato; yet some one 
may perhaps say that old age seems to you less 

1 Latin, Pares cum imribus facillime congregantur. In Plato's 
Symposium, "O/uoiov d/jLoia> ccei 7reAa£ei is quoted as an old proverb 
(iraAcubs hSyos). 



Cicero de Senectute. 



7 



burdensome on account of your wealth, your large 
resources, your high rank, but that these advantages 
fall to the lot of very few. 

Cato. There is, indeed, Laelius, something in 
this ; but it by no means gives the full explanation. 
It is somewhat as in the case of Themistocles in an 
altercation with a certain native of Seriphos, 1 who 
told him that he owed his illustrious fame, not to 
his own greatness, but to that of his country ; and 
Themistocles is said to have answered, "If I had 
been born in Seriphos, I should not have been 
renowned, nor, by Hercules, would you have been 
eminent had you been an Athenian." Very much 
the same may be said about old age, which cannot 
be easy in extreme poverty, even to a wise man, 
nor can it be otherwise than burdensome to one 
destitute of wisdom, even with abundant resources 
of every kind. The best-fitting defensive armor of 
old age, Scipio and Laelius, consists in the knowl- 
edge and practice of the virtues, which, assiduously 
cultivated, after the varied experiences of a long 
life, are wonderfully fruitful, not only because they 
never take flight, not even at the last moment, — 

1 One of the Cyelades, known in mythology, as the island on 
which Perseus was driven on shore and brought up, and whose 
inhabitants he turned to stone with the Gorgon's head ; and in 
history, for its insignificance and poverty, — the reason why un- 
der the Roman emperors it was a frequent place of banishment 
for state criminals ; celebrated also (probably in myth rather than 
fact) for a race of voiceless frogs. — Herodotus tells this story of 
Themistocles. 



8 



Cicero de Senectute. 



although this is a consideration of prime impor- 
tance, — but because the consciousness of a well- 
spent life and a memory rich in good deeds afford 
supreme happiness. 

IV. In my youth I loved Quintus Maximus, 1 
the one who recovered possession of Tarentum, then 
an elderly man, as if he had been of my own age ; 
for in him gravity was seasoned by an affable de- 
portment, nor had time made his manners less agree- 
able. When I first became intimate with him, he 
was not, indeed, so very old, though advanced in 
years. I was born the year after his first consu- 
late. 2 In my early youth I served as a soldier 
under him at Capua, and five years afterward at 
Tarentum. Four years later I was made Quaestor, 
and held that office in the consulship of Tuditanus 
and Cethegus, at the time when he, then quite old, 
urged the passage of the Cincian law concerning 
gifts and fees. 3 He in his age showed in mili- 
tary command all the vigor of youth, and by 
his perseverance put a check to Hannibal's youth- 

1 The fourth of the name. 

2 Quintus Maximus must, then, have been forty-four years 
older than Cato. 

3 This law not only prohibited the payment of fees or offering 
of gifts to advocates ; but it limited the amount of gifts that 
could be made in any case, except with certain legal formalities. 
The object of this last provision was, undoubtedly, to prevent the 
wheedling of men out of valuable property by taking advantage 
of their illnesses, their temporary loss of disposing mind, or their 
apprehension of approaching death. 



Cicero de Senectute. 



9 



ful enthusiasm. My friend Ennius well said of 
him, — 

" One man by slow delays restored our fortunes, 
Preferring not the people's praise to safety, 
And thus his after-glory shines the more." 

How much vigilance, how much wisdom, did he 
show in the retaking of Tarentum ! In my hear- 
ing, indeed, when Salinator, who, after the town was 
taken, had retreated to the citadel, boastfully said, 
" You recovered Tarentum, Quintus Fabius, by my 
aid/' he replied, laughing, "Very true, for, if you 
had not lost it, I should never have recovered it." 1 
Nor had he more eminence as a soldier than he won 
as a civilian, when, in his second consulate, unsup- 
ported by his colleague, Carvilius, he resisted to the 
utmost of his ability Caius Flaminius, tribune of the 
people, in his division in equal portions, to the ple- 
beians, of conquered territory in Picenum and Gaul ; 
and when, holding the office of augur, he dared to 
say that whatever was done for the well-being of 
the republic was done under the most favorable 
auspices, but that whatever measures were passed 
to the injury of the republic were passed under 

1 The retaking of Tarentum was the fatal stroke on Hannibal 
as to the possession of Southern Italy. But in this anecdote, 
Cicero, or some early transcriber, made a mistake as to the name 
of the unsuccessful commander. Marcus Livius Salinator was a 
distinguished general ; but it was Marcus Livius Macatus that 
lost the town of Tarentum, and then did good service from the 
citadel toward its retaking. It is strange, but true, that Cicero 
was not well versed in the history of the Punic wars. 



10 



Cicero de Senectute. 



adverse auspices. In him I knew many things 
worthy of renown, but nothing more admirable than 
the way in which he bore the death of his son, an 
illustrious man and of consular dignity. We have 
in our hands his eulogy on his son, and in reading 
it we feel that he surpassed in this vein even trained 
philosophers. JSTor was he great only in public and 
in the eyes of the community; but he was even 
more excellent in private and domestic life. How 
rich in conversation ! How wise in precept ! How 
ample his knowledge of early times ! How thorough 
his legal science in everything appertaining to his 
office as an augur ! 1 He had, too, for a Boman, a 
large amount of literary culture. He retained in 
his memory, also, all the details of our wars, whether 
in Italy or in regions more remote. I indeed availed 
myself as eagerly of my opportunities of conversing 
with him as if I had already divined, what proved to. 
be true, that, when he should pass away, no man of 
egual intelligence and information would be left. 



V. To what purpose have I said so much about 
Maximus ? That you may be assured by his exam- 

1 The augurs acquired great power in the age when the signs 
which it was their office to interpret were still implicitly believed 
in. From the nice distinctions then deemed of importance there 
grew up a minute formalism, which by degrees constituted a body 
of augural law. The augurs at first had unlimited authority in 
their sphere ; but as faith in auspices declined, the magistrates, 
and even patricians not in office, usurped and maintained certain 
augural rights, so that there was sometimes a conflict of jurisdic- 
tion, giving rise to nice questions of law. 




Cicero de Senectute. 



11 



pie that one has no right to pronounce an old age 
like his wretched. Yet it is not every one that can 
be a Scipio or a Maximus, so that he can recall the 
memory of cities taken, of battles by land and sea, 
of wars conducted, of triumphs won. There is, 
however, a calm and serene old age, which belongs 
to a life passed peacefully, purely, and gracefully, 
such as we learn was the old age of Plato, who died 
while writing in his eighty-first year; or that of 
Isocrates, who says that he wrote the book entitled 
Panathenaicus 1 in his ninety-fourth year, and who 
lived five years afterwards, and whose preceptor, 
Leontinus Gorgias, filled out one hundred and seven 
years without suspending his study and his labor. 
"When he was asked why he was willing to live so 
long, he replied, " I have no fault to find with old 
age," — a noble answer, worthy of a learned man. 
Unwise men, indeed, charge their vices and their 
faults upon old age. So did not Ennius, of whom I 
have just spoken, who writes, 

" As the brave steed, oft on th' Olympian course 
Foremost, now worn with years, seeks quiet rest," 

comparing his own age to that of the brave horse 
that had been wont to win the race. You can dis- 
tinctly remember him. The present Consuls, Titus 
Flamininus and Manius Acilius, were chosen nine- 
teen years after his death, which took place in the 

1 A discourse commemorative of the Athenian patriots held in 
special honor by their fellow-countrymen. 



12 



Cicero de Senectute. 



consulship of Caepio and the second consulship of 
Philippus, when I, being sixty-five years old, with a 
strong voice and sound lungs, spoke in favor of the 
Voconian law. 1 At the age of seventy years — for 
so many did Ennius live — he bore the two burdens 
which are esteemed the heaviest, poverty and old 
age, in such a way that he almost seemed to take 
delight in them. To enter into particulars, I find 
on reflection four reasons why old age seems 
wretched ; — one, that it calls us away from ' the 
management of affairs ; another, that it impairs 
bodily vigor; the third, that it deprives us to a 
great degree of sensual gratifications; the fourth, 
that it brings one to the verge of death. Let us 
see, if you please, how much force and justice there 
is in each of these reasons. 

VI. Old age cuts one off from the management 
of affairs. Of what affairs ? Of those which are 
managed in youth and by strength of body ? But 
are there not affairs properly belonging to the later 
years of life, which may be administered by the 
mind, even though the body be infirm ? Did Quin- 
tus Maximus then do nothing ? Did Lucius Paullus, 

1 A law restricting, and in the case of large estates prohibiting, 
the bequest of property to women, perhaps with the view of pre- 
venting the alienation of estates from the families in which they 
had been transmitted. But an extract from Cato's speech, given 
by Aulus Gellius, charges wives who had separate estates of their 
own with first lending money to their husbands in their stress of 
need, and then becoming their most relentless and annoying 
creditors. 



Cicero de Senectute. 



13 



your father, Scipio, the father-in-law of that excel- 
lent man, my son, do nothing ? Did other old men 
that I might name — the Fabricii, the Curii, the 
Coruncanii — do nothing, when they defended the 
republic by their counsel and influence ? Blindness 
came upon Appius Claudius 1 in his old age ; yet he, 
when the sentiment of the Senate leaned toward 
the conclusion of peace and a treaty with Pyrrhus, 
did not hesitate to say to them what Ennius has 
fully expressed in verse, — ■ 

" Wont to stand firm, upon what devious way 
Demented rush ye now ? " 

and more, most forcibly, to the same purpose. You 
know the poem, and the speech that Appius actu- 
ally made is still extant. This took place seventeen 
years after his second consulship, ten years having 

1 Appius Claudius was undoubtedly the greatest statesman and 
the most useful citizen of his time. His name still lives and some 
vestiges of his public spirit remain in the Appia Vict, Home's 
first great military road, and the Aqua Appia, the earliest aque- 
duct by which water from the mountains was brought into the 
city. Livy tells a curious story of his blindness. The patrician 
gens of the Potitii were hereditary priests of Hercules, whom they 
worshipped by rites which were their family secret. Appius, 
probably apprehensive, as so many modern statesmen have been, 
of potential mischief from secret societies, hired these men to 
divulge the mysteries of their worship to certain public slaves or 
servants. The consequence was that the whole gens, including 
twelve families and thirty young men, perished in a single year, 
and some years afterward (post aliquot annos) by the persistent 
anger of the gods Appius was deprived of sight. Post, ergo 
propter. 



14 



Cicero de Senectute. 



intervened between his two consulates, his censor- 
ship having preceded the first, — so that you may 
infer that he was far advanced in age at the time of 
the war with Pyrrhus, and such is the tradition that 
has come to us from our fathers. Those, therefore, 
who deny that old age has any place in the manage- 
ment of affairs, are as unreasonable as those would 
be who should say that the pilot takes no part in 
sailing a ship because others climb the masts, others 
go to and fro in the gangways, others bail the hold, 
while he sits still in the stern and holds the helm. 
The old man does not do what the young men do ; 
but he does greater and better things. Great things 
are accomplished, not by strength, or swiftness, or 
suppleness of body, but by counsel, influence, de- 
liberate opinion, of which old age is not wont to 
be bereft, but, on the other hand, to possess them 
more abundantly. This you will grant, unless I, 
having been soldier, and military Tribune, and sec- 
ond in command, and as Consul at the head of the 
army, seem to you now idle and useless, because I 
am no longer actively engaged in war. I now pre- 
scribe to the Senate what ought to be done, and 
how. I declare war far in advance against Car- 
thage, 1 which has long been plotting to our detri- 
ment, and whose hostility I shall never cease to 
fear, till I know that the city is utterly swept out 

1 Delenda est Carthago, Carthage must be destroyed, was the 
close of all Cato's speeches in the Senate, whatever the subject of 
discussion. 



Cicero de Senectute. 15 

ft 

of being^j that the immortal gods may reserve 
for you, Scipio, this honor, that you may fully ac- 
complish what your grandfather 1 left to be yet 
done ! This is the thirty-third year since his 
death ; but the memory of such a man all coming 
years will hold in special honor. He died the year 
before my censorship, nine years after my consulate, 
during which he was chosen Consul for the second 
time. If he had lived till his hundredth year, 
would he have had reason to regret his old age ? 
He would not, indeed, have sought added distinc- 
tion by running, or leaping, or hurling the spear, or 
handling the sword, but by counsel, reason, judg- 
ment. Unless these were the characteristics of 
seniors in age, our ancestors would not have called 
the supreme council the Senate. ' Among the Lace- 
daemonians, too, the corresponding name is given 
to the magistrates of the highest grade, who are 
really old men. 2 But if you see fit to read or hear 
the history of foreign nations, you will find that 
states have been undermined by young men, main- 
tained and restored by old men. 

" Say, how lost you so great a state so soon 1 " 
For this men ask, as it is asked in Naevius's play of 
The School, and with other answers this is among 
the first : — 

" A brood came of new leaders, foolish striplings. 99 

1 By adoption. See Introduction. 

2 Tepova-la. None of the members of this body were less than 
sixty years of age. 



16 



Cicero de Senectute. 



Eashness, indeed, belongs to youth ; prudence, to 
age. 

VII. But memory is impaired by age. I have 
no doubt that it is, in persons who do not exercise 
their memory, and in those who are naturally slow- 
minded, y But Themistocles knew by name all the 
citizens of Athens, and do you suppose that, at an 
advanced age, when he met Aristides he called him 
Lysimachus ? I not only know the men who are 
now living; but I have a clear remembrance of 
their fathers and their grandfathers. Nor am I 
afraid to read sepulchral inscriptions, an occupa- 
tion which is said to destroy the memory ; 1 on the 
other hand, my recollection of the dead is thus 
made more vivid. Then, too, I never heard of an 
old man's forgetting where he had buried his money. 
Old men remember everything that they care about, 2 
— the bonds they have given, what is due to them, 
what they owe. v^What shall we say of lawyers ? 

V 

1 Evidently the reference is here to a popular superstition, of 
which, however, I know of no other vestige. 

2 The converse of this proposition is, probably, the best state- 
ment of the causes of what is termed the failure of memory in 
old age. Lasting memory and prompt recollection are the result 
of attention, and attention springs from interest. Old men 
have a vivid recollection of early events, because their interest 
in them was vivid ; while in advanced life strong impressions 
are more rarely made, most of its scenes and incidents being 
little else than the repetition, with slight change, of previous ex- 
periences. Yet the instances are not infrequent in which, after 
one has reached the condition in which yesterday's life is a blank, 
a novel and striking event remains unforgotten. 



Cicero de Senectute. 



17 



Of priests ? 1 Of augurs ? Of philosophers ? How 
many things do they retain in their memory ! Old 
men have their powers of mind unimpaired, when 
they do not suspend their usual pursuits and their 
habits of industry. Nor is this the case only with 
those in conspicuous stations and in public office ; 
it is equally true in private and retired life. Sopho- 
cles in extreme old age still wrote tragedies. Be- 
cause in his close application he seemed to neglect 
his property, his sons instituted judicial proceedings 
to deprive him, as mentally incompetent, of the cus- 
tody of his estate, in like manner as by our law 
fathers of families who mismanage their property 
have its administration taken from them. The old 
man is said to have then recited to the judges the 
Oedipus at Colonics, the play which he had in hand 
and had just written, and to have asked them 
whether that poem seemed the w r ork of a failing 
intellect, 2 l)n hearing this, the judges dismissed 
the case^~L>id old age then impose silence, in their 
several modes of utterance, on him, on Homer, on 
Hesiod, on Simonides, on Stesichorus, on Isocrates 
and Gorgias of whom I have just spoken, on those 

1 There was a considerable body of pontifical law, — corre- 
sponding to the canon law of Christendom, — consisting, in 
part, of immemorial usage or prescription, and, in part, even 
of legislative enactments, of which the members of the pontifical 
college were the judges and administrators, so that, like the au- 
gurs,' they needed officially unimpaired powers of mind and reten- 
tive memory. 

2 He was at this time nearly ninety years of age. 

2 



18 



Cicero de Senectute. 



foremost of philosophers, Pythagoras and Democri- 
tus, on Plato, on Xenocrates, in later time, on Zeno 
and Cleanthes, or on that Diogenes the Stoic whom 
you saw when he was in Eome ? 1 Or with all these 
men was not activity in their life-work coextensive 
with their lives ?/yjBut leaving out of the account 
these pursuits, which have in them a divine element, 
I can name old Eomans who are farmers in what 
was the Sabine territory, my neighbors and friends, 2 
without whose oversight hardly any important work 
is ever done on their land, whether in sowing, or 
harvesting, or storing their crops. This, however, 
is not so surprising in them ; for no one is so old 
that he does not expect to live a year longer. But 
the same persons bestow great pains in labor from 
which they know that they shall never derive any 
benefit. 

" He plants 

Trees to bear fruit when he shall be no more/V) 

r\T 

as our poet Statius says in his Synephebi? Nor, in- 
deed can the farmer, though he be an old man, if 
asked for whom he is planting, hesitate to answer, 
" For the immortal gods, whose will it was, not only 

1 We know not how long Homer or Hesiod lived ; but they are 
always spoken of as old men. The reputed age of the others on 
the list ranged from Plato, at eighty-one, to Democritus, who was 
said to have reached his hundredth year. 

2 Cato generally lived on his Sabine farm when public duty 
did not require his presence in Rome. 

3 Young Friends, probably the name of a play. None of the 
works of Caecilius Statius, its author, are extant. 



Cicero de Senectute. 



19 



that I should receive this estate from my ancestors, 
but that I should also transmit it in undiminished 
value to my posterity." 

VIII. What I have just quoted from Caecilius 1 
about the old man's providing for a coming genera- 
tion, is very far preferable to what he says else- 
where, — 

" Old Age, forsooth, if other ill thou bring not, 
This will suffice, that with one's lengthened years 
So much he sees he fain would leave unseen/' — 

and much, it may be, that he is glad to see ; while 
youth, too, often encounters what it would willingly 
shun. Still worse, that same Caecilius writes, — 

" The utmost misery of age I count it, 
To feel that it is hateful to the young." 

Agreeable rather than hateful ; for as wise old men 
are charmed with well-disposed youth, so do young 
men delight in the counsels of the old, by which 
they are led to the cultivation of the virtues. I do 
not feel that I am less agreeable to you than you 
are to me. — To return to our subject, you see that 
old age is not listless and inert, but is even labori- 
ous, with work and plans of work always in hand, 
generally, indeed, with employments corresponding 
to the pursuits of earlier life. But what shall we 
say of those who even make new acquisitions ? 

1 Caecilius Statius. There can hardly he need of discrimi- 
nating him from Publius Papinius Statius, whose poems are 
extant, and familiarly known to classical scholars. 



20 



Cicero de Senectute. 



Thus we see Solon, in one of his poems, boasting 
that, as he grows old, ^ie widens the range of his 
knowledge every day. I have done the like, hav- 
ing learned Greek in my old age, and have taken 
hold of the study so eagerly — as if to quench a 
long thirst — that I have already become familiar 
with the topics from Greek authors which I have 
been using, as I have talked with you, by way of 
illustration. When I read that Socrates in his old 
age learned to play on the lyre, I could have 
wished to do the same, had the old custom been 
still rife ; but I certainly have worked hard on my 
Greek. 

IX. To pass to the next charge against old age, 
I do not now desire the bodily strength of youth, 
any more than when I was a young man I desired 
the strength of a bull or an elephant. It is becom- 
ing to make use of what one has, and whatever you 
do, to do in proportion to your strength. What 
language can be more contemptible than that re- 
ported of Milon of Crotona, 1 when in his old age he 
saw athletes taking exercise on the race-ground, 
and is said to have cast his eyes on his own arms, 
and to have exclaimed, weeping, " But these are 
dead now " ? Not these, indeed, simpleton, so much 
as you yourself; for you never gained any fame 
from your own self, but only from your lungs and 
arms. You hear nothing like this from Sextus 

1 Six times victor in wrestling in the Olympic games, and six 
times in the Pythian. 



Cicero de Senedute. 



21 



Aelius, 1 nothing at a much earlier time from Titus 
Coruncanius, 2 nor yet from Publius Crassus, 3 who 
expounded the laws to their fellow-citizens, and 
whose wisdom grew to their last breath. There 
is reason, indeed, to fear that a mere orator may- 
lose something of his power with age ; for he needs 
not mind alone, but strong lungs and bodily vigor. 
Yet there is a certain musical quality of the voice 
which becomes — I know not how — even more 
melodious in old age. This, indeed, I have not 
yet lost, and you see how old I am. But the elo- 
quence that becomes one of advanced years is calm 
and gentle, and not infrequently a clear-headed old 
man commands special attention by the simple, 
quiet elegance of his style. If, however, you can- 
not attain this merit, you may be able at least to 
give wholesome advice to Scipio and Laelius. You 
can at least help others by your counsel ; and what 
is more pleasant than old age surrounded by young 
disciples ? Must we not, indeed, admit that old 
age has sufficient strength to teach young men, to 
educate them, to train them for the discharge of 
every duty ? And what can be more worthy of re- 

1 The most distinguished jurist of his time, and not many 
years Cato's senior. 

2 Said to have been the earliest jurist who received pupils. 
He was undoubtedly second in learning and in practical wisdom, 
as in reputation and official honor, to no man of his age. He 
flourished about a century before Cato's time. 

8 Said to have been equally learned and skilled in civil and 
in pontifical law. He was not many years older than Cato. 



22 



Cicero de Senectute. 



nown than work like this ? I used to think Cneius 
and Publius Scipio, and, Scipio, your two grand- 
fathers, Lucius Aemilius and Publius Africanus, 
truly fortunate in being surrounded by noble youth ; 
nor are there any masters of liberal culture who 
are not to be regarded as happy, even though their 
strength may have failed with lengthened years. 
This failure of strength, however, is due oftener to 
the vices of youth than to the necessary infirmity 
of age ; for a licentious and profligate youth trans- 
mits to one's later years a worn-out bodily consti- 
tution. Cyrus indeed, in his dying speech which 
Xenophon records, though somewhat advanced in 
years, says that he has never felt that his old age 
was more feeble than his youth. I remember in my 
boyhood Lucius Metellus, who, having been made 
high-priest four years after his second consulate, 
served in that office twenty-two years, 1 and was to 
the very last in such full strength that he did not 
even feel the loss of youth. There is no need of 

1 He was Consul in 251 and 247 B. C. The earliest age at 
which he was eligible to the consulship was forty-three ; but he 
probably must have reached that dignity at a later age, if he was 
so very old a man thirty years afterward. The pontifex maximus 
(for which we have no better English rendering than high-priest), 
like the other pontifices, held his office by life tenure. At some 
epochs, he was chosen by popular vote ; at others, appointed by 
the college. He and the pontifices were not priests of any special 
divinity, but the legal trustees of the national religion, its rites 
and its laws. The pontifex maximus was, oftener than not, a 
jurist of eminence, and most of the early Roman jurists attained 
that dignity. 



Cicero de Senectute. 



23 



my speaking of myself, though that is an old man's 
habit, and is conceded as a privilege of age. 

X. Do you not know how very often Homer 
introduces Nestor as talking largely of his own 
merits ? Nor was there any fear that, while he 
told the truth about himself, he would incur the 
reproach of oddity or garrulity ; for, as Homer says, 
" words sweeter than honey flowed from his tongue." 
For this suavity of utterance he had no need of 
bodily strength ; yet for this alone the leader of the 
Greeks, 1 while not craving ten like Ajax, says that 
with ten like Nestor he should be sure of the speedy 
fall of Troy. — But to return to my own case, I 
am now in my eighty-fourth year. I should be 
glad if I could make precisely the same boast with 
Cyrus ; yet, in default of it, I can say this at least, 
that, while I am not so strong as I was when a sol- 
dier in the Punic war, or a Quaestor in the same 
war, or Consul in Spain, or when, four years after- 
ward, I fought as military Tribune 2 at Thermopylae, 
in the consulate of Manius Acilius Glabrio, still, as 
you see, old age has not wholly unstrung my nerves 

1 Agamemnon, who craves ten <ruti<ppdd/jLoi'es, equally wise in 
counsel, with Nestor. 

2 According to Livy, Cato was legatus, or second in command, 
at this time, and it is hardly possible that an ex-consul should 
have served as a military tribune. We have here, perhaps, an 
oversight of Cicero, or, possibly, an over-acting of the old man's 
treacherous memory in Cato, whose extreme old age Cicero evi- 
dently personates with marvellous dramatic skill throughout this 
dialogue. 



24 



Cicero de Senectute. 



or broken me down. Neither the Senate, nor the 
rostrum, nor my friends, nor my clients, nor my 
guests miss the strength that I have lost. Nor did 
I ever give assent to that ancient and much-lauded 
proverbial saying, that you must become an old 
man early if you wish to be an old man long. I 
should, indeed, prefer a shorter old age to being old 
before my time. Thus no one has wanted to meet 
me to whom I have denied myself on the plea of 
age. Yet I have less strength than either of you. 
Nor have you indeed the strength of Titus Pontius 
the centurion. 1 Is he therefore any better than 
you ? Provided one husbands his strength, and 
does not attempt to go beyond it, he will not be 
hindered in his work by any lack of the requisite 
strength. It is said that Milo walked the whole 
length of the Olympian race-ground with a living 
ox on his shoulders ; 2 but which would you prefer, 
— this amount of bodily strength, or the strength 
of mind that Pythagoras had ? 3 In fine, I would 

1 Nothing else is known of Pontius than this reference to his 
extraordinary strength. He may be the centurion of that name, 
whose name alone occurs in some verses of Lucilius quoted by 
Cicero in the De Finibus. 

2 He is said to have commenced by lifting and carrying a calf 
daily, and to have continued so doing till the calf had attained 
full growth. 

8 There was a tradition that Milo was a pupil of Pythagoras, 
and that on one occasion the roof of the building in which Py- 
thagoras was lecturing gave way, and was sustained by the single 
might of Milo. 



Cicero de Senectute. 



25 



have you use strength of body while you have it : 
when it fails, I would not have you complain of its 
loss, unless you think it fitting for young men to 
regret their boyhood, or for those who have passed 
on a little farther in life to want their youth back 
again. Life has its fixed course, and nature one 
unvarying way ; each age has assigned to it what 
best suits it, so that the fickleness of boyhood, the 
sanguine temper of youth, the soberness of riper 
years, and the maturity of old age, equally have 
something in harmony with nature, which ought 
to be made availing in its season. You, Scipio, 
must have heard what your grandfather's host 
Masinissa 1 does now that he is ninety years old. 
When he starts on a journey on foot, he never 
mounts a horse ; when he starts on horseback, he 
never relieves himself by walking ; he is never 
induced by rain or cold to cover his head ; he has 
the utmost power of bodily endurance ; and so he 
performs in full all the offices and functions of a 
king. Exercise and temperance, then, can preserve 
even in old age something of one's pristine vigor. 

XI. Old age lacks strength, it is said. But 
strength is not demanded of old age. My period 
of life is exempted by law and custom from offices 

1 King of the Numidians, and for the most part a faithful, 
though not a disinterested, ally of the Romans, in the Punic wars. 
He was eulogized by Roman writers generally ; yet with the rude 
strength he probably combined no little of the rude ethics of a 
barbarian chieftan. 



26 



Cicero de Senectute. 



which cannot be borne without strength. 1 There- 
fore we are compelled to do, not what we are unable 
to do, but even less than we can do. Is it said that 
many old men are so feeble that they are incapable 
of any duty or charge whatsoever ? This, I answer, 
is not an inability peculiar to old age, but common 
to bodily infirmity at whatever period of life. How 
feeble, Scipio, was that son of Africanus who adopted 
you ! 2 But for this, he would have shone second in 
his family as a luminary of the state, adding to his 
father's greatness a more ample intellectual culture. 
What wonder, then, is it that old men are some- 
times feeble, when it is a misfortune which even the 
young cannot always escape ? Old age, Laelius and 
Scipio, should be resisted, and its deficiencies should 
be supplied by faithful effort. Old age, like disease, 
should be fought against. Care must be bestowed 
upon the health ; moderate exercise must be taken ; 
the food and drink should be sufficient to recruit 
the strength, and not in such excess as to become 
oppressive. Nor yet should the body alone be sus- 
tained in vigor, but much more the powers of mind ; 
for these too, unless you pour oil into the lamp, 

1 By law no one over forty-six years of age was required to 
render military service, and Senators above sixty years of age were 
not summoned to the sessions of the Senate, but attended them 
or were absent from them at their own option. 

2 Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus Minor, undoubtedly in 
genius, learning, and ability the foremost of the Scipio family, 
but never able to fiU any other offices than those — involving 
little labor — of Augur and Flamen Dialis. 



Cicero de Senectute. 



27 



are extinguished by old age. Indeed, while over- 
exertion tends by fatigue to weigh down the body, 
exercise makes the mind elastic. For, when Caeci- 
lius speaks of 

" Foolish old men, fit sport for comedy," 1 

he means those who are credulous, forgetful, weak- 
minded, 2 and these are the faults, not of old age, 
but of lazy, indolent, drowsy old age. As wanton- 
ness and licentiousness are the faults of the young 
rather than of the old, yet not of all young men, 
but only of such of them as are depraved, so the 
senile folly which is commonly called dotage 3 be- 
longs not to all, but only to frivolous old men. 
Appius, when both blind and old, governed four 
grown-up sons, five daughters, a very large house- 
hold, a numerous body of clients ; for he had his 
mind on the alert, like a bent bow, nor did he, as 
he became feeble, succumb to old age. He main- 
tained, not only authority, but absolute command 
over all who belonged to him. His servants feared 
him ; his children held him in awe ; all loved him. 
In that family the manners and discipline of the 
earlier time were still in the ascendant. Old age, 

1 A foolish old man, the butt of ridicule and the victim of 
fraud, trickery, and knavery, was a favorite character in Roman 
comedy, having a part in almost every comic drama extant. 

2 Latin, dissolutos, which might be not unaptly rendered out 
of joint, or at loose ends. 

8 Latin, deliratio, which is here much better expressed by 
dotage than by delirium. 



28 



Cicero de Senectute. 



indeed, is worthy of honor only when it defends 
itself, when it asserts its rights, when it comes into 
bondage to no one, when even to the last breath it 
maintains its sway over those of. its own family. 
Still farther, as I hold in high esteem the youth 
who has in him some of the qualities of age, I have 
like esteem for the old man in whom there is some- 
thing of the youth, which he who cultivates may 
be old in body, but will never be so in mind. I 
have now in hand the seventh Book of my History} 
I am collecting all the memorials of earlier times. 
I am just now writing out, as my memory serves 
me, my speeches in the celebrated cases that I have 
defended. I am treating of augural, pontifical, 
civil law. I read a good deal of Greek. At the 
same time, in order to exercise my memory in the 
method prescribed by Pythagoras, 2 I recall every 
evening whatever I have said, heard, or done dur- 
ing the day. These are the exercises of the mind ; 
these, the race-ground of the intellect. In these 
pursuits while I labor vigorously, I hardly feel my 
loss of bodily strength. I appear in court in behalf 
of my friends. I often take my place in the Senate, 

1 Latin, Origines. This was an historical work in seven Books, 
some fragments of which are extant. It purported to give the 
history of Rome from its foundation to the author's own time. In 
the seventh Book his own speeches had their proper place. The 
second and third Books gave the history of the origin of the 
Italian towns. Hence the name of the entire work. 

2 Prescribed by him, however, not for mnemonic, but for moral 
uses. 



Cicero de Seneehde. 



29 



and I there introduce of my own motion 1 subjects 
on which I have thought much and long, and I 
defend my opinions with strength of mind, not of 
body. If I were too feeble to pursue this course 
of life, I still on my bed should find pleasure in 
thinking out what I could no longer do ; but that I 
am able still to do, as well as to think, is the result 
of my past life. One who is always occupied in 
these studies and labors is unaware when age creeps 
upon him. Thus one grows old gradually and un- 
consciously, and life is not suddenly extinguished, 
but closes when by length of time it is burned out. 

XII. I come now to the third charge against 
old age, that, as it is alleged, it lacks the pleasures 
of sense. admirable service of old age, if in- 
deed it takes from us what in youth is more harm- 
ful than all things else ! For I would have you 
hear, young men, an ancient discourse of Archytas 
of Tarentum, 2 a man of great distinction and celeb- 

1 While in the Roman Senate individual Senators could not 
introduce resolutions without previous formalities, there was the 
same liberty of debate that exists in our Congress, and a Senator 
could give free utterance to his views on any subject, however 
remote from the business in hand. 

2 Archytas was equally distinguished as a philosopher, mathe- 
matician, statesman, and general. He is believed to have been 
coeval with Plato, though there is some discrepancy of authorities 
as to the precise period when he lived. Certain letters that pur- 
port to have passed between him and Plato are preserved ; but 
their genuineness is open to question. He was represented as 
having been singularly pure, kind, and generous in his private 
life. 



30 Cicero de Senectute. 

rity, as it was repeated to me when in my youth I 
was at Tarentum with Quintus Maximus. " Man 
has received from nature/' said he, " no more fatal 
scourge than bodily pleasure, by which the passions 
in their eagerness for gratification are made reckless 
and are released from all restraint. Hence spring 
treasons against one's country ; hence, overthrows of 
states; hence, clandestine plottings with enemies. 
In fine, there is no form of guilt, no atrocity of 
evil, to the accomplishment of which men are not 
driven by lust for pleasure. Debaucheries, adulte- 
ries, and all enormities of that kind have no other 
inducing cause than the allurements of pleasure. 
Still more, while neither Nature nor any god has 
bestowed upon man aught more noble than mind, 
nothing is so hostile as pleasure to this divine en- 
dowment and gift. Nor while lust bears sway can 
self-restraint find place, nor under the reign of 
pleasure can virtue have any foothold whatever." 
That this might be better understood, Archytas 
asked his hearers to imagine a person under the 
excitement of the highest amount of bodily pleas- 
ure that could possibly be enjoyed, and maintained 
that it was perfectly obvious to every one that so 
long as such enjoyment lasted it was impossible for 
the mind to act, or for anything to be determined by 
reason or reflection. Hence he concluded that noth- 
ing was so execrable and baneful as pleasure, since, 
when intense and prolonged, it extinguishes all the 
light of intellect. That Archytas discoursed thus 

\ ■ 



Cicero de Senectute. 



31 



with Cams Pontius the Samnite, father of the Pon- 
tius who defeated the consuls Spurius Postumius 
and Titus Veturius at the Caudine Forks, I learned 
from Nearchus of Tarentum, my host, a persistent 
friend of the Eoman people, who said that he had 
heard it from his elders, Plato having been present 
when it was uttered, who, I find, came to Tarentum 
in the consulate of Lucius Camillus and Appius 
Claudius. To what purpose do I speak thus ? 
That you may understand that, were we indeed 
unable by reason and wisdom to spurn pleasure, 
we ought to feel the warmest gratitude to old age 
for making what is opposed to our duty no longer a 
source of delight. For pleasure thwarts good coun- 
sel, is the enemy of reason, and, if I may so speak, 
blindfolds the eyes of the mind, nor has it anything 
in common with virtue. It was, indeed, with great 
reluctance that, seven years after his consulate, I 
expelled from the Senate Lucius Flamininus, the 
brother of that eminently brave man Titus Flami- 
ninus ; but I thought that such vile conduct as his 
ought to be branded. For he, during his consul- 
ship in Gaul, was persuaded by the companion of 
his lust, at a banquet, himself to kill with an axe 
one of the prisoners in chains and under sentence 
of death. 1 He escaped during the censorship of 

1 Livy's story is even worse than this. He says that a Boian 
noble came with his children to cast himself upon the protection 
of the Consul, who, because his infamous associate complained of 
having never seen a gladiator die, first struck the Boian's head 



32 



Cicero cle Senectute. 



his brother, my immediate predecessor ; but I and 
my colleague Flaccus could not by any possibility 
give our implied sanction to lust so infamous, so' 
abandoned, which blended with private ignominy 
disgrace to the office of supreme commander of our 
army. 

XIII. I have often heard from my seniors in 
age, who said that they when they were boys had 
so heard from the old men of their time, that Caius 
Fabricius was wont to express his amazement when, 
while he was ambassador to King Pyrrhus, Cineas 
the Thessalonian told him that there was a certain 
man in Athens, 1 professing to be a philosopher, who 
taught that all that we do ought to be referred to 
pleasure as a standard. Fabricius having told this 
to Manius Curius and Titus Coruncanius, they used 
to wish that the Samnites and Pyrrhus himself 
might become converts to this doctrine, so that, 
giving themselves up to pleasure, they might be 
the more easily conquered. Manius Curius had 
lived in intimacy with Publius Decius, who, five 
years before Curius was Consul, had in his fourth 

with a sword, and when he attempted to retreat, invoking the 
good faith of the Roman people, stabbed him to the heart. 

1 Epicurus, undoubtedly. Cineas was his contemporary, 
though probably not his disciple. He was the intimate friend 
and favorite minister of Pyrrhus, king of Epeirus, who used to 
say that Cineas had taken more cities by his words than he him- 
self had taken by his sword. This sentence — almost overdone — 
is evidently framed expressly in imitation of an old man's ram- 
bling way of telling a story. 



Cicero de Senectute. 



33 



consulate devoted his own life for the safety of the 
state. 1 Fabricius had known Publius Decius, Co- 
runcanius had known him, and from that act of self- 
sacrifice, as well as from his whole life, they inferred 
that there is that which in its very nature is beau- 
tiful and excellent, which is chosen of one's own 
free will, and which every truly good man pursues, 
spurning and despising pleasure. But to what pur- 
pose am I saying so much about pleasure ? Because 
it is not only no reproach to old age, but even its 
highest merit, that it does not severely feel the loss 
of bodily pleasures. But, you may say, it must 
dispense with sumptuous feasts, and loaded tables, 
and oft-drained cups. True, but it equally dis- 
penses with sottishness, and indigestion, and trou- 
bled dreams. 2 But if any license is to be given to 
pleasure, seeing that we do not easily resist its 
allurements, — insomuch that Plato calls pleasure 
the bait of evil, because, forsooth, men are caught 
by it as fishes by the hook, — old age, while it dis- 
penses with excessive feasting, yet can find delight 
in moderate conviviality. When I was a boy I 

1 In the battle of Sentinura, Deems, finding that his soldiers 
were giving way before the fierce onslaught of the Gauls, called 
one of the pontiftces, and asked him to dictate the proper form of 
self-devotion, with imprecation upon the enemy. Then, repeat- 
ing the sacred words, he rushed into the ranks of the enemy and 
was slain. His army, inspirited by his self-sacrifice, won a splen- 
did victory. His father had, on a previous occasion, devoted 
himself in like form and manner. 

2 Latin, insomniis, which literally means sleeplessness, 

3 



34 



Cicero cle Senectute. 



often saw Caius Duilius, the son of Marcus, who 
first gained a naval victory over the Carthaginians, 
returning home from supper. He took delight in 
the frequent escort of a torch-bearer and a flute- 
player, — the first person not actually in office who 
ventured on such display, — a liberty assumed on 
the score of his military fame. 1 But why am I 
talking about others ? I now return to my own 
case. In the first place, I have for many years be- 
longed to a guild. 2 Indeed, guilds were established 
when I was Quaestor, at the time when the Idaean 
rites in honor of the Great Mother were adopted in 
Eome. I then used to feast with my guild fellows, 
moderately on the whole, yet with something of the 
joviality that belonged to my earlier years ; but 
with advancing age, day by day, everything is tem- 
pered down. Nor did I ever measure my delight 

1 Dr. Schmitz, in Smith's Dictionary, says, undoubtedly on 
competent authority, though I can find none, that the torch- 
bearer and the flute-player were permitted to Duilius as a reward 
for his victory. Livy says, in almost the same words with those 
in our text, that Duilius assumed these marks of distinction. 

2 Club would perhaps be a better rendering. The Eoman 
clubs were formed nominally in honor of some divinity, but grew 
naturally into associations for convivial enjoyment, by the same 
tendencies which in Christendom have converted holy days into 
holidays. Whenever a new worship was introduced, a new club 
was formed to take it in charge. Cato's club was formed at the 
time when a shapeless stone, probably meteoric, — said to have 
fallen from heaven on Mount Ida, and worshipped under the name 
of Magna Mater, or Cybele, — was brought to Rome, in accord- 
ance with counsels said to have been derived from the Sibylline 
oracles. 



Cicero de Senectute. 



35 



at these entertainments by the amount of bodily- 
pleasure more than by the intercourse and conver- 
sation of friends. In this feeling, our ancestors 
fitly called the festive meeting of friends at table, 
as implying union in life, a convivial meeting, — 
a much better name than that of the Greeks, who 
call such an occasion sometimes a compotation, 
sometimes a social supper, 1 evidently attaching the 
chief importance to that which is of the least mo- 
ment in an entertainment. 

XIV. I, indeed, for the pleasure of conversation, 
enjoy festive entertainments, even when they begin 
early and end late, 2 and that, not only in the com- 
pany of my coevals, of whom very few remain, but 
with those of your age and with you; and I am 
heartily thankful to my advanced years for increas- 
ing my appetency for conversation, and diminishing 
my craving for food and drink. But if any one 
takes delight in the mere pleasures of the table, 
lest I may seem utterly hostile to appetites which 

1 The following is a more literal rendering of this passage : 
"Our ancestors appropriately named the reclining together of 
frends at a banquet convivium [cum and vivo, living together], 
because it implied a community of life. Better they than the 
Greeks, who called the same thing sometimes compotatio [cum 
and poto, drinking together], and sometimes concoenatio [con and 
coeno, supping together]." Compotatio and concoenatio are both 
Latin words. The corresponding Greek words are cvfiirSa-ioy 
(whence symposium) and <rvv§snrvov. 

2 Latin, tempestivis conviviis. Tempestivus originally meant 
seasonable, thence over early. It is often used to designate at the 
same time the over early and the over late. 



36 



Cicero de Senectute. 



perhaps spring from a natural impulse, I would not 
have it understood that old age is not susceptible of 
them. I indeed enjoy the ancestral fashion of ap- 
pointing a master of ceremonies for the feast, 1 and 
the rules for drinking announced from the head of 
the table, and cups, as in Xenophon's Symposium, 2 
not over large, and slowly drunk, and the cool breeze 
for the dining-hall in summer, and the winter's sun 
or fire. 3 Even on my Sabine farm I keep up these 
customs, and daily fill my table with my neighbors, 
prolonging our varied talk to the latest possible 
hour. But it is said that old men have less inten- 
sity of sensual enjoyment. So I believe ; but there 
is no craving for it. You do not miss what you 
do not want. Sophocles very aptly replied, when 

1 The Roman arrangements for a festive occasion were not 
unlike our own. A presiding officer — the host, or some one 
appointed by him, or chosen by the throw of dice — called upon 
the guests in turn, that on subjects of conversation no opinion 
might be lost, and no guest slighted. He also, in the fashion 
maintained in England among convivialists till a comparatively 
recent time, announced the rules to be observed in drinking, and 
closed his speech with the words, Aut bibe, aut obi, "Either 
drink or go." 

2 ^vjnir6<riov f a dialogue specially designed to bring out the 
leading traits in the character of Socrates, who is the chief 
speaker, and of value, also, as grouping the interlocutors at a 
banquet, and thus incidentally presenting a picture of the eti- 
quette and arrangements of an Athenian supper-table. 

8 It was not uncommon for rich Romans to have both summer 
and winter banqueting-rooms, — the winter room, if possible, 
open to the full heating power of the sun, which in that climate 
supersedes the necessity of artificial heat. 



Cicero de Senectute. 9 37 



asked in his old age whether he indulged in sens- 
ual pleasure, " May the gods do better for me ! I 
rejoice in my escape from a savage and ferocious 
tyrant" To those who desire such pleasures it 
may be offensive and grievous to be debarred from 
them ; but to those already filled and satiated it is 
more pleasant to lack them than to have them. 
Though he does not lack who does not want them, 
I maintain that it is more for one's happiness not 
to want them. But if young men take special 
delight in these pleasures, in the first place, they 
are very paltry sources of enjoyment, and, in the 
second place, they are not wholly out of the reach 
of old men, though it be in a restricted measure. 
As the spectator in the front seat gets the greater 
enjoyment from the acting of Turpio Ambivius, 1 
yet those on the farthest seat are delighted to be 
there ; so youth, having a closer view of the pleas- 
ures of sense, derives, it may be, more joy from 
them, while old age has as much enjoyment as it 
wants in seeing them at a distance. But of what 
immense worth is it for the soul to be with itself, 
to live, as the phrase is, with itself, discharged from 
the service of lust, ambition, strife, enmities, desires 
of every kind ! If one has some provision laid up, 
as it were, of study and learning, nothing is more 
enjoyable than the leisure of old age. We saw 
Caius Gallus, your father's friend, Scipio, almost to 

1 The most celebrated actor of his time, contemporary with 
Terence, and taking leading parts in some of his plays. 



38 Cicero de Senectute. 



the last moment occupied in measuring heaven and 
earth. How often did the morning light overtake 
him when he had begun some problem 1 by night, 
and the night when he had begun in the early 
morning ! How did he delight to predict to us far 
in advance the eclipses of the sun and moon ! 
What pleasure have old men taken in pursuits 
less recondite, yet demanding keenness and vigor 
of mind! How did JSTaevius rejoice in his Punic 
War ! 2 Plautus in his Truculentus, — in his Pseu- 
dolus ! 8 I saw also Livius 4 in his old age, who, 
having brought out a play 5 six years before I was 
born, in the consulship of Cento and Tuditanus, 
continued before the public till I was almost a 
man. What shall I say of the devotion of Publius 
Licinius Crassus 6 to the study of pontifical and 
civil law ? What of the similar diligence of this 

1 Latin, aliquid describere, probably denoting to draw a dia- 
gram. Galhis undoubtedly employed geometrical methods in bis 
astronomical studies. 

2 Naevius was the earliest Roman poet of enduring reputation. 
He wrote both comedies and tragedies, and in his old age, ban- 
ished to Utica for libels contained in his plays, he produced an 
epic poem on the first Punic war, in which he had served as a 
soldier. 

3 Both of these plays are extant. They were probably the 
latest that he wrote. 

4 Livius Andronicus, earlier than Naevius. His plays were in 
ruder Latin, and in Cicero's time were no longer read. 

5 Latin, fabulam docuisset, i. e. taught the actors their parts, 
and presided at the rehearsal. 

6 He was both Consul and pontifex maximus. 



Cicero de Senectute. 



39 



Publius Scipio, 1 who has just been put at the head 
of the pontifical college ? We have seen all these 
whom I have named ardently engaged in their old 
age in their several departments of mental labor. 
Marcus Cethegus, 2 too, whom Ennius rightly called 
the "Marrow of Persuasion/' — how zealously did 
we see him exercise himself when an old man in 
the art of speaking ! What, then, are the pleas- 
ures of feasts, and games, and sensual indulgence, 
compared with these pleasures ? Indeed, it is these 
intellectual pursuits that for wise and well-nurtured 
men grow with years, so that it is to Solon's honor 
that he says, in the verse which I just now quoted, 
that as he advanced in age he learned something 
every day, — a pleasure of the mind than which 
there can be none greater. 

XV. I pass now to the pleasures of agriculture, 
which give me inconceivable delight, to which age 
is no impediment, and in which one makes the 
nearest approach to the life of the true philosopher. 
For the farmer keeps an open account with the 

1 Publius Cornelius Scipio Corculum, twice Consul, also Cen- 
sor and pontifcx maximus, a man of superior integrity as well as 
learning, and a strong conservative as to manners and morals. 
The surname of Corculum, a diminutive of cor, was given him, it 
is said, for his wisdom, but more probably for the combined qual- 
ities of mind and heart that won for him the confidence of the 
people. 

2 He filled successively the highest offices in the republic, and 
was for many years pontifex maximus. Horace refers to him as 
valid authority for the use of words that were obsolescent when 
he wrote. 



40 



Cicero de Senectute. 



earth, which never refuses a draft, nor ever returns 
what has been committed to it without interest, 
and if sometimes at a small, generally at an ample 
rate of increase. Yet I am charmed not only with 
the revenue, but with the very nature and proper- 
ties of the soil. When it has received the seed into 
its softened and prepared bosom, it keeps it buried 1 
(whence our word for the harrowing 2 which buries 
the seed is derived), then by its pressure and by 
the moisture which it yields it cleaves the seed and 
draws out from it the green shoot, which, sustained 
by its rootlet-fibres, grows till it stands erect on its 
jointed stalk, enclosed in sheaths, as if to protect 
the down of its youth, till, emerging from them, it 
yields the grain, with its orderly arrangement in the 
ear, defended against predatory birds by its bearded 
rampart. What can I say of the planting, up- 
springing, and growth of vines ? It is with insa- 
tiable delight that I thus make known to you the 
repose and enjoyment of my old age. Not to speak 
of the vital power of all things that grow directly 
from the earth, — which from so tiny a fig or grape 
seed, or from the very smallest seeds of other 
fruits or plants, produces such massive trunks and 

1 Latin, occaecatum, literally blinded, from ob and caecus. 

2 Latin, occatio, from the verb occo. There seerns no reason for 
deriving this from occaeco. Cicero is very apt to infer derivation 
from similarity, and there are not a few tokens of his carelessness 
in this regard. Thus in different works of his he derives religio 
from religo and relego, giving from each derivation the definition 
that serves his turn at the time. 



Cicero de Senectute. 



41 



branches, — do not shoots, scions, quicksets, layers, 
accomplish results which no one can behold with- 
out delighted admiration ? The vine, indeed, droop- 
ing by nature, unless supported, is weighed down to 
the ground ; but to raise itself it embraces with its 
hand-like tendrils whatever it can lay hold upon ; 
and then, as it twines with multifold and diffusive 
growth, the art of the vine-dresser trims it close 
with the pruning-knife, that it may not run unto 
useless wood and spread too far. Thus in the early 
spring, in what remains after the pruning, the gem 
(so called) starts out at the joints of the twigs, from 
which the incipient cluster of grapes makes its ap- 
pearance ; and this, growing by the moisture of the 
earth and the heat of the sun, is at first very sour 
to the taste ; then, as it ripens, it becomes sweety 
while, clothed with leaves, it lacks not moderate 
warmth, and at the same time escapes the sun's 
intenser beams. What can be more gladdening 
than the fruit of the vine ; what more beautiful, as 
it hangs ungathered ? I am charmed, as I have said, 
not only with the utility of the vine, but equally 
with the whole process of its cultivation and with 
its very nature, — with its rows of stakes, the lat- 
eral supports from stake to stake, the tying up and 
training of the vines, the amputation of some of 
the twigs, of which I have spoken, and the planting 
of others. What can I tell you of irrigation, and 
of the repeated digging of the soil to make the 
ground more fertile ? What shall I say of the 



42 



Cicero de Senectute. 



efficacy of manuring ? of which I have written in 
my book on Farm Life, 1 but of which the learned 
Hesiod, in writing about agriculture, says not a 
word, — though Homer, who, I think, lived many 
generations before him, introduces Laertes as reliev- 
ing his solicitude for his son by tilling and manur- 
ing his field. ISTor is rural life made cheerful by 
grainfields, meadows, vineyards, and shrubberies 
alone, but also by gardens and orchards ; then 
again, by the feeding of sheep, by swarms of bees, 
by a vast variety of flowers. Nor does one take 
pleasure merely in the various modes of planting, 
but equally in those of grafting, than which no 
agricultural invention shows greater skill. 

XVI. I could enumerate many other charms of 
rural life ; but I feel that those which I have named 
have occupied fully enough of your time. Pardon 
me ; for I am thoroughly versed in everything be- 
longing to country life, and old age is naturally 
prolix, nor can I pretend to acquit it of all the 

1 De Re Rustica, — a work much less sentimental than a 
" Farmer's Almanac." The Cato who has such an aesthetic ap- 
preciation of the charms of rural life, is a myth of Cicero. Cato's 
own book is a manual of hard, stern, sometimes brutal economy, 
advising the sale of worn-out cattle, and of old or sick slaves. 
Vendat boves vetulos .... servum senem, servum morbosum, et 
siquid aliud supersit, vendat. He even carries his niggardliness 
so far as to recommend that, when a slave has a new garment 
given him, the old shall be taken from him, .to be used for 
patches. But Cicero is right in representing Cato as wise on the 
subject of manure, on which, if I am not mistaken, he was in 
advance, not only of his own time, but even of ours. 



Cicero de Senectute. 



43 



weaknesses laid to its charge. With your leave I 
would add, then, that Manius Curius, after winning 
triumphs over the Samnites, over the Sabines, over 
Pyrrhus, spent the close of his life in the country ; 
and when I look at his house, which is not far from 
mine, I cannot sufficiently admire either the self- 
denying integrity of the man himself or the high 
moral standard of his time. As Curius was sitting 
by his hearth the Samnites brought him a large 
amount of gold, and he spurned the bribe, saying 
that he thought it better than having gold to bear 
sway over those who have gold. Such a mind can- 
not fail to make a happy old age. — But to return 
to my subject, and not to wander from my own 
mode of life, there were in those days Senators, that 
is, as the name implies, old men, living on farms, if 
indeed Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus received when 
ploughing the announcement that he had been 
made Dictator, under whose dictatorship it was 
that Caius Servilius Ahala, the Master of Horse, by 
his order, slew Spurius Maelius, who was aspiring 
after royalty. 1 Curius, too, and other old men, were 
wont to be summoned from their farms to the Sen- 
ate, giving thus to the messengers who summoned 
them a special name 2 derived from the highways 

1 Cincinnatus was twice Dictator. It was to his first dictator- 
ship that he was called from the plough ; in his second, that he 
ordered the killing of Spurius Maelius. 

2 Viatores, from via, a public highway. This name was given 
from early time to messengers of the magistrates and of the courts, 



44 



Cicero de Senectute. 



on which they travelled. Was then the old age of 
these men who found delight in tilling the ground 
unhappy? I indeed doubt whether there can be 
any happier old age, taking into account not only 
the occupation of agriculture which is healthy for 
every one, but also the enjoyment of which I have 
spoken, and the bountiful supply of everything that 
can be desired for the food of man and the worship 
of the gods, so that, if any persons have such crav- 
ings, we may come again into friendly terms with 
the pleasures of sense. For a thrifty and industri- 
ous farmer has a full wine-cellar, oil-cellar, and 
larder, and the whole estate is rich, abounding in 
swine, kids, lambs, fowls, milk, cheese, honey. The 
farmers themselves are wont to call their garden a 
second stock of the winter's relishing food. 1 All 
else has the richer zest from the work of leisure 
time in fowling and hunting. Why should I say 
more about the green of the meadows, or the rows 
of trees, or the beauty of the vineyards and the 
olive groves ? To cut the subject short, nothing 

whether their office was performed within or beyond the city 
limits. There may be other authorities than Cicero's for the 
derivation of the word from the summoning of Senators resident 
in the country : I know of none. 

1 Latin, succidiam alteram. Succidia means bacon, and I can 
find no other probable meaning for it. My interpretation of the 
passage is this. Farmers laid in a stock of bacon, or strongly 
salted meats, for winter, to give a relish to other food. They 
looked to their gardens to furnish a corresponding relish for 
summer. 



Cicero cle Senectute. 



45 



can be more bountiful for use, or more ornate to 
the eye, than a well-cultivated farm, to the enjoy- 
ment of which advanced years not only interpose 
no hindrance, but hold forth invitation and allure- 
ment ; for where can old age find more genial 
warmth of sunshine or fire, or, on the other hand, 
more cooling shade or more refreshing waters ? 
Let others take for their own delight arms, horses, 
spears, clubs, balls, swimming-bouts, and foot-races. 
From their many diversions let them leave for us 
old men knuckle-bones and dice. 1 Either will serve 
our turn ; but without them old age can hardly be 
contented. 

XVII. Xenophon's books are in many ways very 
useful, and I beg you to continue to read them. 
With what a flow of eloquence does he praise agri- 
culture in that book of his about the care of one's 
estate, called Oeconomicus ! 2 Still more, to show 
that there is nothing so worthy of a king as the 
pursuits of agriculture, he introduces in that book 
Socrates as telling this story to Critobolus. Cyrus 

1 Latin, talos et tesseras. Talus means an ankle- or knuckle- 
bone. The tali used by the Romans were either the actual bones 
of animals, or imitations of them in ivory, bronze, or stone. They 
were employed sometimes as jack-stones or dib-stones are now, in 
games of skill, and sometimes with the numbers I., II., III., and 
IV. on their four plane surfaces, in games of chance. The tesserae 
were cubes of ivory, bone, or wood, like our dice, numbered from 
one to six. 

2 OIkovoiaik6s, a work wholly devoted to the care of prop- 
erty. 



46 



Cicero de Senectute. 



the younger, king of Persia, 1 of surpassing genius 
and renown, when Lysander, the Lacedaemonian, a 
man of the highest military reputation, 2 came to 
him at Sardis to bring presents from the confeder- 
ate states, having treated Lysander in other ways 
with familiar courtesy, showed him an enclosed 
field planted with the utmost care. Lysander, 
marvelling at the great height of the trees, their 
arrangement in ornamental groups, 3 the ground 
thoroughly tilled and free from weeds, and the de- 
licious odors breathing from the flowers, said that 
he admired, not only the care, but also the skill of 
him who had planned and laid out these grounds. 
Cyrus answered, " I myself laid out all this field. 
The plan is mine ; the arrangement is mine, and 
many of these trees I planted with my own hand." 
Then Lysander, looking at his purple robe, his ele- 
gance of person, 4 and his Persian ornaments rich in 
gold and precious stones, said, " Men may well call 

1 This Cyrus was not a king, but a viceroy under his brother, 
Artaxerxes Mnemon. 

2 Latin, vir summae virtutis. I have given to virtus its primi- 
tive military signification. He was a brave man and an able com- 
mander, but cruel and treacherous ; and it is hardly possible that 
Cicero could have meant to ascribe to him virtus in the ethical 
sense in which he often uses the word. 

3 Latin, directos in quincuncem or dines. The quincunx was a 
favorite mode of planting with the Roman gardeners. The name 
is derived from the numeral V, every three trees being so arranged 
as to form a V. 

4 Latin, nitorcm corporis. Perhaps, but I think not, his body 
shining with oil. 



Cicero de Senectute. 



47 



you happy, Cyrus, since your fortune corresponds 
to your merit." This fortune, then, old men can 
enjoy, nor does age preclude our interest in other 
things indeed, but least of all in agriculture, to the 
very last moment of life. We have heard that Mar- 
cus Valerius Corvus lived to his hundredth year, 
passing the close of his life in the country, and en- 
gaged to the last in labors of the field. There were 
forty-six years between his first and his sixth con- 
sulship. Thus his term of public life lasted the full 
number of years which our ancestors accounted as 
the beginning of old age, 1 and his old age was hap- 
pier than middle life, having more authority with 
less labor. Indeed, the crowning glory of old age is 
authority. How great was this in Lucius Caecilius 
Metellus ! How great in Atilius Calatinus ! whose 
eulogy is, — ■ 

" Him first of men all tribes and nations own 
With one consent." 

This, you know, is the inscription on his tomb. 
He was rightly held, then, in the highest esteem, 
since all were unanimous in his praise. How great 
a man did we see in Publius Crassus, the chief 
priest, of whom I have just spoken, and afterward 
in Marcus Lepidus, invested with the same priest- 
hood ! What shall I say of Paullus or of Africa- 
nus ? Or of Maximus, 2 if I may name him again ? 

1 In their forty-sixth year Eoman citizens were exempted on 
the score of age from liability to military service. 

2 Quintus Fahius Maximus. See Sect. X. 



48 



Cicero de Senectute. 



These were men, not only in whose uttered opinion, 
but in whose very nod, dwelt authority. Old age, 
especially when it has filled offices of high public 
trust, has so much authority, that for this alone it 
is worth all the pleasures of youth. 

XVIII. But remember that in all that I say I 
am praising the old age that has laid its founda- 
tions in youth. Hence follows the maxim to which 
I once gave utterance with the assent of all who 
heard me : " Wretched is the old age which has to 
speak in its own defence." White hairs or wrinkles 
cannot usurp authority ; but an early life well spent 
reaps authority as the fruit of its age. Indeed, at- 
tentions which seem trivial and conventional are 
honorable when merited ; for instance, being saluted 
in the morning, grasped by the hand, received by 
the rising of those present, escorted to the Forum, 
escorted home, asked for advice, — customs care- 
fully observed with us, and in other states so far as 
good manners prevail. It is related that Lysander 
the Lacedaemonian, of whom I just made mention, 
used to say that Laceclaemon was the best home for 
an old man, insomuch as nowhere else was such 
deference paid to length of years, or age held in 
such honor. There is, indeed, a tradition that 
once in Athens, at a public festival, when an old 
Athenian entered the crowded theatre, no one of his 
fellow-citizens made room for him, but that, as he 
approached the place assigned to the delegates from 
Lacedaemon, they all rose and remained standing 



Cicero de Senectute. 



49 



till the old man was seated. When they were ap- 
plauded for this in every possible way by the whole 
assembly, one of them said, " The Athenians know 
what is right, but will not do it." Of many excel- 
lent usages in our college of Augurs none deserves 
higher commendation than this, — that the mem- 
bers give their opinions in the order of age, the 
elder members taking precedence, not only of those 
who have held higher official rank, but even of 
those who for the time being are at the head of the 
state. 1 What pleasures of body are then to be com- 
pared with the prerogatives of authority ? Those 
who have borne these honors with due dignity seem 
to me to have thoroughly performed their part in 
the drama of life, and not, like untrained players, to 
have broken down in the last act. — But it is said 
that old men are morose, and uneasy, and irritable, 
and hard to please ; and were we to make the in- 
quiry, we might be told that they are avaricious. 
But these are faults of character, not of age. Yet 
moroseness and the faults that I named with it 
have some excuse, sufficient, not indeed to justify, 
but to extenuate them. Old men imagine that 
they are scorned, despised, mocked. Then, too, 
with a frail body, any cause of vexation is felt 
more keenly. But such infirmities of temper are 

1 The Augurs were chosen for life, and did not lose their official 
rank and title, even in case of disgraceful punishment. It was, 
therefore, possible for a Consul or Censor to be at the same time 
an Augur. 



50 



Cicero de Senectute. 



corrected by good manners and liberal culture, as 
we may see in actual life, as well as on the stage in 
the brothers in the play of the Adelphi. What 
grimness do we see in one of these brothers ; what a 
genial disposition in the other ! So it is in society ; 
for as it is not wine of every vintage, so it is not 
every temper that grows sour with age. I approve 
of gravity in old age, so it be not excessive ; for 
moderation in all things is becoming : but for bit- 
terness I have no tolerance. As for senile avarice, 
I do not understand what it means ; for can any- 
thing be more foolish than, in proportion as there 
is less of the way to travel, to seek the more 
provision for it ? 

XIX. There remains a fourth reason for depre- 
cating old age, that it is liable to excessive solicitude 
and distress, because death is so near ; and it cer- 
tainly cannot be very far off. wretched old man, 
not to have learned in so long a life that death is 
to be despised ! which manifestly ought to be re- 
garded with indifference if it really puts an end to 
the soul, or to be even desired if at length it leads 
the soul where it will be immortal ; and certainly 
there is no third possibility that can be imagined. 1 
Why then should I fear if after death I shall be 

1 Cicero seems to have forgotten that the Stoics of the earlier 
school believed in the survival of the soul after death, but not in 
its immortality. The soul was, at the consummation of the pres- 
ent order of the universe, to be reabsorbed into the divine essence 
from which it emanated, and thus in the new creation that would 
ensue to have no separate existence. 



Cicero de Senectute. 



51 



either not miserable, or even happy ? Moreover, 
who is so foolish, however young he may be, as to 
feel sure on any day that he will live till nightfall ? 
Youth has many more chances of death than those 
of my age. Young men are more liable to ill- 
nesses ; they are more severely attacked by disease ; 
they are cured with more difficulty. Thus few 
reach old age. Were it otherwise, affairs would be 
better and more discreetly managed ; for old men 
have mind and reason and practical wisdom ; and 
if there were none of them, communities could not 
hold together. But to return to impending death, 
— can this be urged as a charge against old age, 
when you see that it belongs to it in common with 
youth ? I felt in the death of my most excellent 
son, 1 and equally, Scipio, in that of your brothers, 2 
who were born to the expectation of the highest 
honors, that death is common to all ages. But, it 
is said, the young man hopes to live long, while the 

1 Marcus Porcius Cato Licinianus. He was Cato's only son by 
his first marriage. He had reached middle life, and died but a 
few years before his father. He was a man of high character, had 
become eminent as a jurist, and was praetor elect at the time of 
his death. His father pronounced his eulogy at his funeral, which 
was conducted at the lowest possible rate of expense, on the plea 
of poverty, which the father's miserly disposition probably justi- 
fied to his own consciousness. 

2 Two sons of Aemilius Paullus, who died at the ages of twelve 
and fifteen, one just before, the other shortly after their father's 
triumph over Perseus. As his two elder sons had become by 
adoption members of other families, he was left without legal 
heir or successor. 



52 



Cicero de Senectute. 



old man can have no such hope. The hope, at any 
rate, is unwise ; for what is more foolish than to 
take things uncertain for certain, false for true ? Is 
it urged that the old man has absolutely nothing 
to hope ? For that very reason he is in a better 
condition than the young man, because what the 
youth hopes he has already obtained. The one 
wishes to live long; the other has lived long. 
Yet, ye good gods, what is there in man's life that 
is long ? Grant the very latest term of life ; sup- 
pose that we expect to reach the age of the king 
of Tartessus. 1 For it is on record that a certain 
Arganthonius, who reigned eighty years in Gades, 
lived to the age of a hundred and twenty. But to 
me no life seems long that has any end. For when 
the end comes, then that which has passed has 
flowed away; that alone remains which you have 
won by virtue and by a good life. Hours, indeed, 
and days, and months, and years, glide by, nor does 
the past ever return, nor yet can it be known what 
is to come. Each one should be content with such 
time as it is allotted to him to live. In order to give 
pleasure to the audience, the actor need not finish 

1 A region in the southwest corner of Spain, supposed, not un- 
reasonably, to be the Tarshish of the Hebrew Scriptures. Its 
chief city was Gades (a plural form, including adjacent islands), 
or Gadis, known in modern geography by the slightly altered 
name of Cadiz. This city was the seat of a very ancient Phoeni- 
cian colony. The longevity of Arganthonius is mentioned by 
several writers, who do not agree as to his age. Pliny says that 
he lived a hundred and thirty years. 



Cicero de Senectutc. 



53 



the play ; he may win approval in whatever act he 
takes part in; nor need the wise man remain on 
the stage till the closing plaudit. A brief time is 
loug enough to live well and honorably; 1 but if 
you live on, you have no more reason to mourn 
over your advancing years, than the farmers have, 
when the sweet days of spring are past, to lament 
the coming of summer and of autumn. Spring 
typifies youth, and shows the fruit that will be ; 
the rest of life is fitted for reaping and gathering 
the fruit. Moreover, the fruit of old age is, as I 
have often said, the memory and abundance of 
goods previously obtained. But all things that oc- 
cur according to nature are to be reckoned as goods ; 
and what is so fully according to nature as for old 
men to die ? while the same thing happens to the 
young with the opposition and repugnancy of na- 
ture. Thus young men seem to me to die as when 
a fierce flame is extinguished by a stream of water ; 
while old men die as when a spent fire goes out of 
its own accord, without force employed to quench 
it. Or, as apples, if unripe, are violently wrenched 
from the tree, while, mature and ripened, they fall, 
so force takes life from the young, maturity from 
the old; and this ripeness of old age is to me so 

1 " Honorable age is not that which standeth in length of 
time, or that is measured by number of years. But wisdom is the 

gray hair unto men, and an unspotted life is old age He, 

being made perfect in a short time, fulfilled a long time." — Wis- 
dom of Solomon, iv. 8, 9, 14. 



54 



Cicero de Senectute. 



pleasant, that, in proportion as I draw near to death, 
I seem to see land, and after a long voyage to be on 
the point of entering the harbor. 

XX. The close of other ages is definitely fixed ; 1 
but old age has no fixed term, and one may fitly 
live in it so long as he can observe and discharge 
the duties of his station, and yet despise death. 
Old age, fearless of death, may transcend youth in 
courage and in fortitude. Such is the meaning of 
Solon's answer to the tyrant Pisistratus, who asked 
him what was his ground of confidence in resisting 
him so boldly, and Solon replied, " Old age." But 
the most desirable end of life is when — the under- 
standing and the other faculties unimpaired — Na- 
ture, who put together, takes apart her own work. 
As he who built a ship or a house can take it to 
pieces the most easily, so Nature, who compacted 
the human frame, is the best agent for its dissolu- 
tion. Then, again, whatever has been recently put 
together is torn apart with difficulty; old fabrics, 
easily. Thus what brief remainder there may be 
of life ought to be neither greedily sought by old 
men, nor yet abandoned without cause, 2 and Py- 
thagoras forbids one to desert the garrison and post 
of life without the order of the commander, that is, 

1 Childhood legally terminated at seventeen, youth at forty- 
six ; then old age began. 

2 The Stoics generally maintained the lawfulness of suicide 
for sufficient cause, and Cicero more than intimates this as his 
opinion. Pythagoras, and Socrates, as reported by Plato, utterly 
condemned it. 



Cicero cle Senectute. 



55 



God. There are extant, indeed, verses of Solon the 
Wise/ in which he says that he does not want to 
die without the grief and lamentation of his friends, 
desiring, as I suppose, to be held dear by those in 
intimate relation with him; but I am inclined to 
prefer what Ennius writes, — 

" Let no one honor me with tears, or make 
A lamentation at my funeral.'' 

He thinks that death is not to be mourned, since it 
is followed by immortality. There may be, indeed, 
some painful sensation in dying, yet for only a little 
while, especially for the old; after death there is 
either desirable sensation or none at all. But such 
thoughts as this ought to be familiar to us from 
youth, that we may make no account of death. 
Without such habits of thought one cannot be of a 
tranquil mind ; for it is certain that we must die, 
and it is uncertain whether it be not this very pass- 
ing day. How then can one be composed in mind 
while he fears death, which impends over him every 
hour ? On this subject there seems no need of a long 
discussion, when I recall to memory, — not Lucius 
Brutus, who was slain in setting his country free ; 
not the two Decii, spurring their horses to a death 
of their own choice; not Marcus Atilius, returning 
to the punishment of death that he might keep 
faith with an enemy ; not the two Scipios, who 
wanted to block the way for the Carthaginians even 

1 Solon was one of the Seven Wise Men of Greece. 



56 



Cicero de Senectute. 



with their own bodies ; not your grandfather, Lu- 
cius Paullus, who yielded up his life to expiate his 
colleague's rashness in the ignominious battle of 
Cannae; not Marcus Marcellus, whose body not 
even the most cruel of enemies would suffer to 
lack the honor of a funeral, 1 — but our legions, 
often going, as I have said in my History? with a 
firm and cheerful mind, to scenes of peril whence 
they expected never to return. Shall well-trained 
old men, then, fear what youth, and they not only 
untrained, but even fresh from the country, de- 
spise ? — In fine, satiety of life, as it seems to me, 
creates satiety of pursuits of every kind. There are 
certain pursuits belonging to boyhood ; do grown- 
up young men therefore long for them ? There are 
others appertaining to early youth; are they re- 
quired in the sedate period of life which we call 
middle age ? This, too, has its own pursuits, and 
they are not sought in old age. As the pursuits of 
earlier periods of life fail, so in like manner do 
those of old age. When this period is reached, 
satiety of life brings a season ripe for death. 

XXI. I see, indeed, no reason why I should 
hesitate to tell you how I myself feel about death ; 
for I seem to have a clearer view of it, the nearer 
I approach it. My belief is that your father, Pub- 

1 The names and incidents here enumerated and referred to are 
too familiar to the readers of Roman history to require special 
notice. 

2 Origines. 



Cicero de Senedute. 



57 



lius Scipio, and yours, Caius Laelius, men of the 
highest renown and my very dear friends, are liv- 
ing, and are living the only life that truly deserves 
to be called life. Indeed, while we are shut up in 
this prison of the body, we are performing a heavy 
task laid upon us by necessity; for the soul, of 
celestial birth, is forced down from its supremely 
high abode, and, as it were, plunged into the earth, 
a place uncongenial with its divine nature and its 
eternity. I believe, indeed, that the gods dissemi- 
nated souls, and planted them in human bodies, that 
there might be those who should hold the earth in 
charge, and contemplating the order of celestial 
beings, should copy it in symmetry and harmony 
of life. I was led to this belief, not only by rea- 
son and argument, but by the pre-eminent author- 
ity of the greatest philosophers. I learned that 
Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans, almost our fel- 
low-countrymen, 1 who used to be called Italian 
philosophers, never doubted that we had souls that 
emanated from the universal divine mind. I was 
impressed, also, by what Socrates, whom the oracle 
of Apollo pronounced the wisest of men, taught 
with regard to the immortality of souls, on the last 

1 Pythagoras was probably a native of Samos, but after exten- 
sive travel in the East established himself and gathered disciples 
at Crotona, a city founded by Greek colonists in Magna Graecia, or 
Southern Italy. Hence his followers bore the name of the Italian 
or Italic school, the only school of philosophy, it is believed, 
that ever seemed indigenous — though this not native — in Italian 
soil. 



58 



Cicero de Senectute. 



day of his life. Why should I say more ? So have 
I convinced myself, so I feel, that since such is the 
rapid movement of souls, such their memory of 
the past and foresight of the future, so many are 
the arts, so profound the sciences, so numerous the 
inventions to which they have given birth, the na- 
ture which contains all these things cannot be mor- 
tal; that as the soul is always active, and has no 
prime cause of motion inasmuch as it puts itself in 
motion, so it can have no end of motion, because 
it can never abandon itself; moreover, that since 
the nature of the soul is un compounded, and has in 
itself no admixture of aught that is unequal to or 
unlike itself, it is indivisible, and if so, is imperish- 
able ; and that there is strong reason for believing 
that men know a great deal before they are born in 
the ease with which boys learn difficult arts, and 
the rapidity with which they seize upon innumer- 
able things, so that they seem not to be receiving 
them for the first time, but to be recalling and re- 
membering them. This is the sum of what I have 
from Plato. 1 

XXII. In Xenophon's narrative, 2 the elder Cy- 
rus says in dying : " Do not imagine, my beloved 
sons, that when I go from you I shall be nowhere, 
or shall cease to be. For while I was with you, 
you did not see my soul ; but you inferred its exist- 

1 A synopsis of the argument for immortality given, as in the 
words of Socrates, in Plato's Phaedon. 

2 The Cyropaedia. 



Cicero de Senectute. 



59 



ence from the things which I did in this body. 
Believe then that I am the same being, even though 
you do not see me at all. The fame of illustrious 
men would not remain after their death, if the souls 
of those men did nothing to perpetuate their mem- 
ory. Indeed, I never could be persuaded that souls 
live while they are in mortal bodies and die when 
they depart from them, nor yet that the soul be- 
comes void of wisdom on leaving a senseless body ; 
but I have believed that when, freed from all corpo- 
real mixture, it begins to be pure and entire, it then 
is wise. Moreover, when the constitution of man 
is dissolved by death, it is obvious what becomes of 
each of the other parts; for they all go whence 
they came : but the soul alone is invisible, alike 
when it is present in the body and when it departs. 
You see nothing so nearly resembling death as 
sleep. Now in sleep souls most clearly show their 
divineness ; 1 for when they are thus relaxed and 
free, they foresee the future. From this we may 
understand what they will be when they have en- 
tirely released themselves from the bonds of the 
body. Therefore, if these things are so, reverence 
me as a divine being. 2 If, however, the soul is 
going to perish with the body, you still, revering 

1 Latin, divinitatem suam. 

2 Latin, sic me colitote, ut deum, referring, as I suppose, not 
to an apotheosis after the manner of the Koman Emperors, but to 
the divineness (divinitas) ascribed to the soul in prescient dreams, 
which, as has just been said, prefigure what the soul will become 
in dying. 



60 



Cicero de Senectute. 



the gods who protect and govern all this beautiful 
universe, will keep my memory in pious and in- 
violate regard." 1 

XXIII. Such were the last words of Cyrus. 
Let me now, if it seem good to you, express my 
own opinion and feeling. No one will ever con- 
vince me, Scipio, that your father Paullus, or your 
two grandfathers, Paullus and Africanus, or the 
father or the uncle of Africanus, or many men of 
surpassing excellence whom I need not name, 
undertook such noble enterprises which were to 
belong to the grateful remembrance of posterity, 
without a clear perception that posterity belonged 
to them. Or think you, — if after the manner of 
old men I may boast a little on my own account, — 
think you that I would have taken upon myself 
such a vast amount of labor, by day and by night, 
at home and in military service, if I had been going 
to put the same limits to my fame that belong to 
my earthly life ? Would it not have been much 
better to pass my time in leisure and quiet, remote 
from toil and strife ? But somehow my soul, rais- 
ing itself 2 above the present, was always looking 
onward to posterity, as if, when it departed from 
life, then at length it would truly live. But unless 

1 This is not a literal translation from Xenophon, nor can it 
have been intended for one. Cicero meant to give it in the form 
in which Cato might have been supposed to quote it from 
memory. 

2 Latin, sese erigens .... prospiciebat. The figure implies 
standing, as it were, on tiptoe, to get a clearer distant view. 



Cicero de Senectute. 



61 



souls were indeed immortal, men's souls would not 
strive for undying fame in proportion to their tran- 
scending merit. What ? Since men of the highest 
wisdom die with perfect calmness, those who are 
the most foolish with extreme disquiet, can you 
doubt that the soul which sees more and farther 
perceives that it is going to a better state, while 
the soul of obtuser vision has no view beyond 
death ? For my part, I am transported with desire 
to see your fathers whom I revered and loved ; 
nor yet do I long to meet those only whom I have 
known, but also those of whom I have heard and 
read, and about whom I myself have written. 
Therefore one could not easily turn me back on 
my lifeway, nor would I willingly, like Pelias, 1 be 
plunged in the rejuvenating caldron. Indeed, were 
any god to grant that from my present age I might 
go back to boyhood, or become a crying child in the 
cradle, I should steadfastly refuse ; nor would I be 
willing, as from a finished race, to be summoned 
back from the goal to the starting-point. For what 
advantage is there in life ? Or rather, what is there 
of arduous toil that is wanting to it ? But grant 
all that you may in its favor, it still certainly has 
either its excess or its fit measure of duration. I 
am not, indeed, inclined to speak ill of life, as many 
and even wise men have often done, nor am I sorry 

1 The myth, as it has come down to us, represents Aeson as 
the old man whom magic arts made young again, while the like 
experiment on Pelias was a disastrous failure. 



62 



Cicero de Senectute. 



to have lived ; for I have so lived that I do not 
think that I was born to no purpose. Yet I depart 
from life, as from an inn, not as from a home ; for 
nature has given us here a lodging for a sojourn, 
not a place of habitation. glorious day, when I 
shall go to that divine company and assembly of 
souls, and when I shall depart from this crowd and 
tumult ! I shall go, not only to the men of whom 
I have already spoken, but also to my Cato, than 
whom no better man was ever born, nor one who 
surpassed him in filial piety, whose funeral pile I 
lighted, — the office which he should have per- 
formed for me, — but whose soul, not leaving me, 
but looking back upon me, has certainly gone into 
those regions whither he saw that I should come to 
him. This my calamity I seemed to bear bravely. 
Not that I endured it with an untroubled mind ; but 
I was consoled by the thought that there would be 
between us no long parting of the way and divided 
life. For these reasons, Scipio, as you have said 
that you and Laelius have observed with wonder, 
old age sits lightly upon me. "Not only is it not 
burdensome; it is even pleasant. But if I err in 
believing that the souls of men are immortal, I am 
glad thus to err, nor am I willing that this error in 
which I delight shall be wrested from me so long as 
I live ; while if in death, as some paltry philoso- 
phers 1 think, I shall have no consciousness, the 

1 The Epicureans, whose grovelling philosophy Cicero never 
loses an opportunity of assailing or decrying. This essay, it will 



Cicero de Senectute. 63 

dead philosophers cannot ridicule this delusion of 
mine. But if we are not going to be immortal, it 
is yet desirable for man to cease living in his due 
time; for nature has its measure, as of all other 
things, so of life. Old age is the closing act of life, 
as of a drama, and we ought in this to avoid utter 
weariness, especially if the act has been prolonged 
beyond its due length. — I had these things to say 
about old age, which I earnestly hope that you may 
reach, so that you can verify by experience what 
you have heard from me. 

be remembered, is dedicated to Atticus, who professed to belong 
to the Epicurean school, but whose opinions sat so lightly upon 
him that he was not likely to take offence at their being im- 
pugned or ridiculed. 




INDEX. 



Agriculture, pleasures of, 39. 
Appius Claudius, old age of, 12, 27. 
Aristo of Chios, treatise of, on old age, 3. 
Attic us, Titus Pomponius, parentage of, xvL 

character of, xvii. 

manners of, xviii. 

learning of, xviii. 
Augurs, respect of the, for old age, 49. 
Authority of old age, 49. 

Cato, Marcus Porcius, character of, xxi. 

estimate of, by Livy, xxii. 

mode of living of, xxiii. 

military career of, xxiv. 

conduct of, as Censor, xxv. 

litigious habits of, xxvi. 

literary culture of, xxvii. 

the Be Re Rustica of. xxvii. 

vigor in old age of, 14, 28. 
' learning Greek in old age, 20. 

enjoying moderate festivities, 34. 
Cicero, how situated when this treatise was written, viii. 

correspondence of, with Atticus, xix. 
Cincinnatus, called from the plough, 43. 
Corvus, Manius, old age of, 47. 
Cyrus the elder, last words of, 60. 
Cvrus the younger, horticulture of, 45. 

5 



66 



Index. 



Death, fear of, 50. 

impending over the young as well as the old, 51. 
natural and easy in old age, 54. 
examples of the contempt of, 55. 
De Senectute, the, when written, v. 

referred to in Cicero's other works, vi. 
sources of, vii. 

Ennius, quoted, 1. 

old age of, 11. 
Epicurus, as described by Cineas, 32. 

Fabius Maximus, old age of, 8. 
Farm life, charms of, 43. 

suited to old age, 44. 
Flamininus, Lucius, flagitious conduct of, 31. 

Gorgias, old age of, 11. 
Grain fields, beauty of, 40. 

Immortality, reasons for, 56. 

hope of, 60. 
Irritability, alleged, of old age, 49. 
I socrates, old age of, 11. 

Laelius, Caius, character of, xxviii. 

writings of, xxix. 
Livy, character of Cato by, xxii. 

Massinissa, vigorous old age of, 25. 
Memory, not necessarily impaired by age, 16 

Occatio, derivation of, 40 n. 

Old age, said to creep on one insidiously, 4. 

alleged evils of, chargeable to character, 6. 

does not cut one off from the management of affairs, 12. 

bodily strength often unimpaired by, 20. 

to be actively resisted, 26. 

said to lack the pleasures of sense, 29. 

compatible with intellectual activity, 37. 



Index. 



67 



Plato, old age of, 11. 

argument of, for immortality, 58. 
Pythagoras, belief of, in immortality, 57. 

Scipio Africanus Minor, military career of, xxx. 

conduct of, as Censor, xxxi. 
death of, xxxi. 
Sophocles, mental vigor of, in old age, 17. 

rejoicing in freedom from the tyranny of appetite, 36. 
Succidia, meaning of, 44 n. 

Tali, 45 n. 
Tesserae, 45 n. 

Vines, beauty of, 41. 
Viatores, derivation of, 43 n. 

Xenophon, books of, commended, 45. 

story of Cyrus the younger, from the Oeconomicus of, 
46. 

last words of Cyrus the elder, from the Cyropaedia of. 
58. 



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